photography

The power of photography

“Elaborate Pride Costume, Gay Pride,” Vancouver, 1996. (© Dina Goldstein)

One of the JCC Jewish Book Festival pre-festival events holds special meaning for the Jewish Independent. Photographer Dina Goldstein, whose artistry has focused on large-scale narrative tableaux the last many years, began her career with the JI’s predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin. She has compiled thousands of images from her work over the last three decades – as a photojournalist, editorial photographer, traveler and artist – for the recently published 400-page hard-cover The XXX Archive, which she will share with the community on Feb. 12, 7 p.m.

photo - Dina Goldstein talks about her new book, The Archive XXX, at a JCC Jewish Book Festival pre-festival event on Feb. 12 — Dina Goldstein talks about her new book, The Archive XXX, at a JCC Jewish Book Festival pre-festival event on Feb. 12. *(© Dina Goldstein)*

“I spent the pandemic going through containers of binders filled with negatives. Many of the images I remember snapping, but others that I found surprised me,” Goldstein told the Independent. “Editing the lot after 30 years of shooting was overwhelming at first. The process of archiving is slow and fastidious, often challenging my expeditious nature. I leaned in, not knowing how long or how many images I would be working with. Within two years, I scanned, photographed, numbered, printed and added over 3,000 images to a boxed and digital archive. The result left me relieved that my life’s work was now organized in a way that was documented and accessible.”

The word “herculean” is used in The Archive XXX to describe the task of creating the archive. Goldstein worked by year of creation, grouping the images by decades.

“I started with the early ’90s, when I first started my career and shot with black-and-white film,” she said. “Many of those images I had photographed for the Jewish Western Bulletin, my first job as an editorial shooter. I had special opportunities to meet and photograph many great people, like Elie Wiesel, Seth Rogen, Liz Taylor, Ruth Westheimer, Mordecai Richler, Jackie Mason, Bill Clinton.

“In the 2000s, I was working as a commercial and editorial photographer. I photographed mostly in colour and did some experimentation with processes. This is when I began crafting series of photographs. I spent two years at Hastings Racetrack and created Trackrecord. I expanded on my staged portraits with DAVID.

photo - Comedian Seth Rogen in his early days, 1997. Rogen is just one of many famous people that Dina Goldstein has photographed — Comedian Seth Rogen in his early days, 1997. Rogen is just one of many famous people that Dina Goldstein has photographed. (© Dina Goldstein)

“By 2006, digital photography was introduced as consumer cameras. Art directors were passing along assignments to less-qualified shooters and/or having the writer also take the pictures. I felt that I needed to pivot,” Goldstein said, adding that, by then, she was also a new mother and things in general were shifting.

“In 2007,” she said, “I began to focus on a new series inspired by my toddler daughter, who suddenly became obsessed with Disney princesses. This was a new way of creating narrative within my imagery. The series was a critical success, giving me the confidence to continue with this methodology.”

Although Goldstein mentions the making of her tableaux projects in The Archive XXX, she decided not to include the staged works within the compilation. “This is also because I continued enthusiastically photographing street, documentary and portraiture,” she said.

Over the 2010s, Goldstein was invited to show her work internationally at galleries, photo festivals and museums, and traveled extensively – to Europe, India, China, Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. “So many of The Archive images come from my travels around the world,” she said.

The Archive XXX ends at the start of the pandemic, in the early 2020s. Of course, she has continued to create. Last fall, she presented a new staged photography series: Mistresspieces. Each of the 10 works features a famous female portrait from history placed in a modern-day challenge. For example, the goddess of Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” floats alongside a beach piled with the life jackets of those who have fled to European shores and Salvador Dalí’s “Galatea at the Moment of Creation” has Galatea surrounded by Amazon packages and melting icebergs in Goldstein’s reimagining.

Mistresspieces is Goldstein’s eighth tableaux series, including Fallen Princesses.

“The idea for Fallen Princesses came to me intuitively, when I realized the way that Disney was influencing my daughter,” she explained. “I decided to select well-known female fairytale characters and parachute them into modernity. I gave them all relatable challenges that play out within a familiar location. The methodology, production-based, was novel, as I no longer just depended on myself and my camera. This format is more collaborative and filmic, with lighting as an intricate skill. Thankfully, the project was successful online, in the media and in education. So, I discovered that I could still create critical work, with specific messaging amplifying my voice in the form of visual social commentary…. Now, in light of AI and the quick accessibility of image-making, I am looking to the future, making some tough decisions.”

Goldstein recognized the power of images at a young age.

“As a child, I would go through my grandmother’s photographs for hours at a time,” she said. “The postcard-like black-and-white photos of her, as a young woman in Romania, were not only beautiful but a window into her life. I would stare at an image and take it all in, her outfit, her shoes, the people she was with, the buildings behind her. Within these images, I discovered people and places throughout the decades of her life. As an adult, I have kept my camera beside me, just in case, it was a compulsion of sorts. I wanted to make pictures that would tell the story of my life as well. Perhaps not as the subject, but as the narrator. Today, mostly everyone suffers from the same need, with the readiness and ease of using a smartphone camera to document or to create an image.”

In The Archive XXX, there are photographs of such a diverse range of people, from presidents to Pride paraders, the famous and the often-overlooked. That Goldstein is comfortable around people, no matter who they are, is partly because of her father.

“My father was a very charismatic figure,” she said. “He was a product of the Second World War, uneducated but street smart. He was able to connect with people, all sorts of people. I understood that there is always something that you may have in common with another person. That’s a good starting point.”

Travel has also contributed to Goldstein’s ease around almost everyone in almost every situation.

“Traveling as a young person allowed me to open up to others, and trust that most folks are good people,” she explained. “My positive experiences as a young photographer were foundational for what the next three decades would bring, working with various diverse personalities. Becoming a mother made me more cautious with my assignments and travel. I certainly didn’t take as many chances or put myself in danger while my girls were little. I remember traveling in India and Colombia, both places I had to be extra aware.

photo - “Horse and Carriage,” Romania, 2006 — “Horse and Carriage,” Romania, 2006. *(© Dina Goldstein)*

“In general, I find that society is complex and divided. This became super-evident during the pandemic, and recently after Oct. 7, 2023. I was able to photograph the anti-vaxxer gang, where bizarre people came out of the woodwork. The Free Palestine bunch includes some of these types, and also an element of proud antisemites. When they first rallied, in big crowds, holding up signs ‘From the River to the Sea’ down Commercial Drive, I photographed it, slightly shocked, slightly sickened. I decided then that I could not personally or professionally continue to be there as a witness to this open hatred.”

A lot changed for Goldstein after Oct. 7, she said. “Losing friends that were once close, making new friends (mostly Jewish), actively fighting against anti-Jewish/Israel sentiment in my East Van neighbourhood and within the Vancouver arts community. This leads to the next chapter of my career, where I will focus more on my Jewish/Israeli identity and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.”

Goldstein has written a TV series called Grimm Lane, which is based on Fallen Princesses. She is creating a new book with her narrative series Storyography and is also working on the TV series The Tribe, which is based on three Jewish families living in Toronto.

For more about The Archive XXX, Goldstein’s tableaux series and other work, visit dinagoldstein.com. To attend her JCC Jewish Book Festival talk, register at jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival-events/feb-12. The event is free to attend.

Community milestones … October 2025

photo - Anita and Arnold Silber — Anita and Arnold Silber *(photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)*

Last month, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver received the generous gift of $500,000 from the Arnold and Anita Silber Family Foundation toward the postwar renovations and expansion of Beit Vancouver in Kiryat Shmona.

The Silber family are long-time supporters of Federation’s work in its partnership region of Etzba Hagalil. This recent gift will jumpstart the launch of the centre into the next era, advancing the upgrades the facility requires in its role as the central hub of growth and resilience for the youth and children of Kiryat Shmona. As part of the renovation, the new Silber Family Wing will provide spaces for small-to-medium-sized group programs and activities, helping meet the growing needs of the community as they return to the region and rebuild their lives.

Established in 1980, Beit Vancouver has long been a centre of learning, creativity and community. More than 1,000 children and youth participate in weekly programs, including the Youth City Council, Krembo Wings (an inclusive youth movement), the Studio Program (a social-emotional therapeutic initiative) and a music centre. Since the mid-1990s, Jewish Federation and donors from the Vancouver community have invested funds to strengthen Etzba Hagalil, with Beit Vancouver at the heart of this work – supporting education, social welfare and regional development to help youth grow, lead and shape their futures.

“I don’t come from a strong home at all … and my folks are always struggling. Beit Vancouver was the one place I could rely on after school and during vacations. My other option was to hang out for hours at the park,” shared Hodaya, who grew up in Kiryat Shmona. “My experiences at Beit Vancouver have made me connected to my community and city until today. Beit Vancouver changed my life.”

Throughout the Iron Swords war, Beit Vancouver stood empty, suffering damage from nearby rocket hits and neglect. Now, as families return to the region, the need to restore and renew this space is more urgent than ever.

“Beit Vancouver represents the heart of the community in Kiryat Shmona. Our family believes in the power of youth to lead and heal, and we are honoured to help create a space where they can thrive. This gift is our way of standing with them as they rebuild their lives and their city,” said Arnold Silber.

• • •

photo - “The Frigatebird and the Diamond Ring” by Liron Gertsman — “The Frigatebird and the Diamond Ring” by Liron Gertsman

Liron Gertsman’s “The Frigatebird and the Diamond Ring” has been awarded the Bird Photographer of the Year title, selected from more than 33,000 entries. His image also won Gold Award in the Birds in Flight category.

“I spent well over a year of planning to capture my dream of a bird in front of the total solar eclipse,” said Gertsman. “I enlisted the help of a boat to position myself near some islets off Mazatlán that were frequented by seabirds. As the moon uncovered the sun’s edge at the end of totality, I captured this image during the eclipse phase known as the ‘diamond ring’ – a moment that lasts mere seconds.”

Celebrating bird life from around the world, the Bird Photographer of the Year images comprise some of the most incredible bird photos in the world, while also raising funds for Bird Photographer of the Year’s partner charity, Birds on the Brink.

Check out the behind-the-scenes clip at birdpoty.com/2025-winners to see the moment that Gertsman took the photograph. To attend one of Gertsman’s workshops or tours, visit vancouverbirdingtours.com.

• • •

The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver welcomes several new community connectors – local leaders who foster engagement, connection and belonging.

Abbey Westbury is the community connector for the Okanagan. She has been a pillar of Jewish life in the region for more than a decade, serving as vice-president of the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre and as a board member of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia.

On Salt Spring Island and the Gulf Islands, Ayala Reznik has already begun her work, and Elvira Molochkovetski and Anabel Wind are on the Victoria team, in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island (JFVVI).

In Squamish, Sara Evans will support local Jewish engagement, strengthen connections between individuals and organizations, and work closely with both Federation and grassroots partners.

In South Delta, Lizz Kelly has joined the team, bringing her experience in community engagement with the Chamber of Commerce to her new role.

In the Comox Valley, Jessica Benoualid’s work over the past year to create welcoming spaces for the Jewish community made her the perfect fit for this position.

To learn more or connect with a community connector near you, email [email protected].

A family of storytellers

Ben Shneiderman, a retired computer scientist who lives in Vancouver, is a member of an extraordinary family. Recently, he promoted his Uncle Chim’s photography exhibition at the Zack Gallery, as well as the new English translation of his father’s book about the Spanish Civil War (1937-1939).

photo - Ben Shneiderman — Ben Shneiderman (photo from Ben Shneiderman)

It all started with Shneiderman’s grandfather, Benjamin Szymin, a respected publisher of Yiddish and Hebrew books in Warsaw before the Second World War. His daughter Halina (later Eileen) and son David (Chim) grew up surrounded by culture and tradition, inspired by the conversations of the best Polish-Jewish writers, artists and scientists.

“My mother Halina studied at the Warsaw university before she met my father,” Shneiderman said in an interview with the Independent. “After they married, in 1933, they moved to Paris.”

Shneiderman’s father, Samuel, was cut from the same cloth. He is considered one of the first Jewish war correspondents in Europe and America. In the 1930s, he published multiple articles and books in Polish and Yiddish on Jewish issues and social developments in Europe.

Ben Shneiderman remembered that his parents both decided early on that only his father would get a byline. “The times were different,” he said with a smile. “But they worked as a team. Mother did a lot of research. She typed the texts Father dictated, and then she edited and re-typed and fact-checked, until they were both satisfied. When Father went to Spain in 1937 to report on the Civil War, Mother went with him – she had her trusted typewriter with her.”

In 1938, Samuel Shneiderman compiled his reportages from Spain into the book War in Spain, which was published in Yiddish.

“The book included photographs taken by my uncle, Mother’s brother David, the legendary photographer Chim,” said Shneiderman. “Chim was also in Spain at the time, reporting on the war.”

In the past few years, the book has experienced an unexpected revival. “I had nothing to do with it, but I was glad,” said Shneiderman. “The book was published in Polish in 2021. Then, in 2023, it was translated into Spanish. In 2024, the English translation came from the Yiddish Book Centre.”

The English translation’s title is Journey Through the Spanish Civil War (translator Deborah A. Green), and Shneiderman gave a slide presentation on it and his family last month at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, under the aegis of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. He explained that his parents left Europe just before the Second World War, but they couldn’t get his grandparents out of Poland. The older generation of his family did not survive the Holocaust.

As soon as his parents arrived in New York, they became immersed in the Yiddish writing and journalism milieu, and they both started publishing in English, as well. Together and separately, they covered the themes of postwar Europe, Israel, and Jewish life in the United States. Shneiderman’s father, in addition to writing articles for such publications as The National Jewish Monthly, the New York Times, Hadassah Magazine and The Reporter, also wrote non-fiction books, poetry and movie reviews. Plus, he edited several books by prominent Yiddish writers.

Growing up in a family steeped in writing and journalism, and with his uncle being a famous photographer, it might have been expected that Shneiderman would follow in their footsteps. His older sister did, in a way. “She moved to Israel in 1963 and taught English there,” he said. But he chose a different path.

“I was always interested in photography, like Chim,” he said. “I even won a photography contest in high school.” But, in college, he studied physics and math. “I had a cousin who was a physicist. He influenced me, but I was never much into physics. Mostly, I was entranced with math and with computers. I worked as a programmer for a couple physicists while still in college. I also took psychology classes, and philosophy. I wanted to know everything.”

He kept taking photos as a hobby, and that interest persists to this day. “I photographed many of my colleagues – pioneers of computer sciences. My pictures of them were published by a number of magazines,” he said. “Overall, I have over 40,000 photos. I also published them in my book Encounters with HCI Pioneers: A Personal History and Photo Journal, in 2019.”

HCI stands for human-computer interaction, which is Shneiderman’s primary field of research. “In 1973, I got the first PhD in computer sciences at my college,” he said.

In 1977, as part of an American delegation, he went to Russia on an exchange program. “We visited Moscow and Novosibirsk,” he said. “I met many interesting people there. One of them, a local computer scientist, Simon Berkovich, told me in confidence that he wanted to emigrate to the US and asked me if I could help. I said I would try. When he left Russia some time later, he had a stopover in Rome, like many other Soviet immigrants. Some of them went on to Israel, but Berkovich contacted me, and I wrote him a letter that I needed him for my work. He was able to come to the US with this letter. We even wrote a paper together. He is a professor now at George Washington University.”

Shneiderman recalls fondly his visit to a synagogue in Moscow: “Several of us went. I was concerned about our safety, but nothing bad happened. It was fun,” he said.

On the professional front, Shneiderman has always maintained that the current trend of developing artificial intelligence (AI) as autonomous machines wasn’t the way to go. In 1980 – 45 years ago – he even wrote a book on the subject, called Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems.

“AI should be a tool, not a creator,” he said. “I don’t think a software should write books or paint pictures or drive cars autonomously. I think it should make people’s jobs easier, assist humans, not replace them. After all, a camera doesn’t take photos – I do. But my smart camera helps me manage the focus, the lighting and other parameters. Apple agrees with me. I worked for them as a consultant for five years.”

Shneiderman has been a firm proponent of this point of view for decades. He has expressed it in his publications and at industry conferences. In 1982, he co-founded what is now known as the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. He also coined the term “direct manipulation,” which is the way we move objects on a screen with a mouse or a finger. He thinks humans should be an integral part of computer interactions, because only humans can make ethical decisions. No AI can ever know what it feels like to be a person. “There is no ‘I’ in AI,” he joked.

Shneiderman and his wife have been living in Vancouver since 2020, when they moved here from Bethesda, Md. “My daughter teaches anthropology at UBC,” he said. “We visited her often for years and even bought an apartment here. We liked it here. Then, COVID happened, while we were visiting, so we stayed in Vancouver. My wife was born in Canada and always had a Canadian passport, and I became a citizen last year.”

From Warsaw at the beginning of the 20th century to Vancouver 100 years later, this family continues to share stories.

“Grandfather told them in Yiddish,” Shneiderman said. “My uncle told them in pictures. My parents told their stories in words. And I told them in data, using computers as my medium. We are a family of storytellers.”

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

Chim’s photos at the Zack

A photograph by David Seymour (Chim) of children in Normandy, in 1947. Part of the exhibit Chim’s Photojournalism: From War to Hope, at the Zack Gallery until June 15. (photo from Ben Shneiderman)

The new show at the Zack Gallery, Chim’s Photojournalism: From War to Hope, features one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century – David Seymour (known as Chim). Chim was killed in 1956, a few days before his 45th birthday, while photographing the Suez Crisis in Egypt, but his legacy lives on even now, almost 70 years after his tragic death.

Gallery manager Sarah Dobbs told the Independent that Ben Shneiderman, Chim’s nephew and the manager of his estate, approached her about the show.

“I was immediately intrigued,” she said. “I met with him and asked if we could host the exhibition. I recognized its importance to the community at the JCC and also to the city of Vancouver. It is a rare opportunity to showcase such an amazing photojournalist. It made sense to host it during the Festival of Jewish Culture in May. I met with the art committee here, and they agreed.… This is the first time these works will be shown together in Canada.”

According to Dobbs, the exhibit was initiated by Cynthia Young, a curator at the New York International Centre of Photography, using vintage prints in their collection.

“Then, the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Centre produced the 51 modern prints for their showing,” Dobbs said. “Later, they were presented in Portland, Ore., at their Jewish museum and Holocaust education centre. I flew down to Portland to see the exhibition while it was there and chatted with the curators.”

To package and ship the display to Vancouver, Dobbs needed funds. “I applied for grants and approached individuals,” she said. “In addition to the shipping cost, we also had a special wall built inside the gallery. It will serve us for other exhibitions, moving forward.”

The show preview on April 22 was a joyful event, presided by Shneiderman, who shared with guests his intimate knowledge of his uncle’s work and life.

David Seymour was born in 1911 in Warsaw. His father, Benjamin Szymin, was a respected publisher of Yiddish and Hebrew books. As a young man, Seymour studied printing in Leipzig and, later, chemistry and science in Paris. He wanted to become a scientist. Meanwhile, photography fascinated him. He started taking photographs and selling them to support himself financially, and unexpectedly found a passion for humanitarian photojournalism. His first credited photographs appeared in the French magazine Regards in 1934.

Interested in social issues, Seymour photographed labourers and political rallies, famous actors and street scenes. At that time, he adopted his professional name, Chim, a simplification of his last name, Szymin.

Between 1936 and 1938, as a photojournalist, Chim documented the Spanish Civil War and other international political events. Twenty-five of his Spanish stories were published in Regards. Several of those photos are included in the Zack show. One of them, a close-up of a nursing mother looking up, obviously troubled (1936), is well known. Shneiderman said several history scholars studied this photograph and concluded that it was one of the inspirations of Picasso’s 1937 masterpiece, “Guernica.” Chim’s photo of Picasso in front of “Guernica” positions the painting’s detail of a woman looking up at the falling bombs, right behind the artist.

In 1939, Chim escaped the unfolding war in Europe for Mexico and, later, the United States. As a multilingual and Sorbonne-educated journalist, he served in the US military intelligence as a photo-interpreter. After the war, he resumed his photojournalism career.

In 1947, he and a group of his friends, like-minded photographers, founded Magnum Photos, a cooperative run by photographers. Chim served as Magnum president from 1954 until his death.

Chim’s postwar photographic stories are a blend of anguish and hope. Many of the images are on display at the Zack, divided into several distinct sections. The biggest section is “The Children of Europe.”

In 1948, Chim took a UNESCO assignment to report on the plight of the 11 million European children displaced by the war. He visited Italy, Greece, Hungary, Austria and other European countries. He photographed children who were maimed and orphaned, children playing beside ruins or working in print shops or begging in the streets.

“When LIFE magazine published a spread of those pictures,” Shneiderman said, “together with a list of organizations that accepted donations on behalf of those children, the pouring in of donations was unprecedented.”

Another series of photographs focused on postwar Germany. One of the most poignant ones in this series shows a section of a beach divided by barbed wire – the border between West and East Germany. A couple of boys lounge on the sand. A young woman in a swimming suit runs towards the water. In the foreground, a border guard in uniform stands grim and watchful with his guard dog and his rifle. Tension thrums through the image, underlined by questions and uncertainties.

On the other hand, Chim’s Israeli photographs of the early 1950s are infused with hope. A man lifts his baby to the sky in elation – the first baby born in his village. A wedding is celebrated under the chuppah, its makeshift poles including a gun and a pitchfork. An Independence Day parade rolls through Tel Aviv. A team of fishers proudly display their catch of the day to the photographer.

photo - A photograph by David Seymour (Chim) of a wedding in Israel, in 1952 — A photograph by David Seymour (Chim) of a wedding in Israel, in 1952. *(photo from Ben Shneiderman)*

In all his visual stories, Chim is always there with his subjects. They are his co-authors.

“It is that emotional connection that made many celebrities willing to pose for him,” said Shneiderman.

Chim photographed Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Picasso, and many others. These photographs are not included in the show, but, together with those that are included, they portray their creator as a man of courage, integrity and vision, one of the best photographic artists of the 20th century.

“Is photojournalism art?” Dobbs mused. “Yes, I think so. Photojournalists capture a moment, an interaction at a specific time. Contemporary art is a mirror of our times. It reflects the societal changes, cultural shifts and significant events that shape our world. It is what the best photojournalists, like Chim, do.”

Dobbs is certain that Chim’s work is still relevant.

“It continues to inspire and draw attention. It teaches photographers to get close to their subjects,” she said. “His images remind us of the past, of the destruction of war, but also of the humanity that transcends it, and of peoples’ resilience.”

Chim’s Photojournalism: From War to Hope is on display until June 15. It is sponsored by the Averbach Foundation, Esther Chetner, the Yosef Wosk Family Foundation and the Government of Canada, in partnership with Shneiderman, Magnum Photos, the International Centre of Photography in New York, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

For more information and to see a selection of photos, visit davidseymour.com.

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

US long interested in Mideast

A photograph of Gen. Lewis Cass taken by Mathew Brady, circa 1860-65. In 1837, Cass dropped the anchor of the USS Constitution off Jaffa. (photo from US National Archives and Records Administration)

President Donald Trump’s unconventional proposal on Feb. 5 to annex the Gaza Strip isn’t the first time the United States has expressed territorial ambitions in the Middle East.

In 1837, Gen. Lewis Cass (1782-1866) dropped the anchor of the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” off Jaffa. (Until British dynamite cleared the rock-strewn harbour in the 1920s, rowboats connected the port with the ships anchored offshore.) Together with several US Navy officers, Cass proceeded inland, planning to survey the uncharted Dead Sea – the lowest point on earth – but the poorly equipped mission was a failure. Ill from sunstroke and dehydration, the sailors barely managed to return to their vessel alive.

A decade later, Lieut. William Francis Lynch (1801-1865) of the US Navy led a better-provisioned 17-man expedition to explore the Jordan River and Dead Sea. Camels hauled the prefabricated boats specially manufactured of copper and galvanized iron overland from the Mediterranean Sea to Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Lynch then ventured down the Jordan River, which is a creek by most standards. In tandem, a party proceeded on land. The mission mapped the Jordan’s hitherto unknown 27 rapids and cascades. Though it is only 100 kilometres from the freshwater Lake Kinneret to the Dead Sea, the Jordan River’s winding course was 322 kilometres long. Lynch described the Jordan as unsuitable for navigation, calling it “more sinuous even than the Mississippi.”

photo - Lieut. William F. Lynch, circa 1861-62. In the mid 1800s, Lynch led a 17-man expedition to explore the Jordan River and Dead Sea — Lieut. William F. Lynch, circa 1861-62. In the mid 1800s, Lynch led a 17-man expedition to explore the Jordan River and Dead Sea. *(photo from Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph Collection, NH 367)*

While advancing “the cause of science,” Lynch was also at “the service of American commerce with the region.” He reported “an extensive plain, luxuriant in vegetation and presenting … a richness of alluvial soil, the produce of which, with proper agriculture, might nourish a vast population.”

While Congress shelved Lynch’s report recommending colonization, it helped spark the United States’s fascination with the Holy Land – and led to the establishment of American colonization projects in Jaffa and Jerusalem.

At Tel Aviv’s south end is a cluster of wooden clapboard buildings straight out of New England known as the American Colony. The story begins shortly after the American Civil War: on Aug. 11, 1866, 157 members of the Palestine Emigration Colony – including 48 children under the age of 12 – set sail from Jonesport, Me., for Jaffa on the newly built, three-masted vessel USS Nellie Chapin.

George Jones Adams (1811-1880), leader of the 35 New England families, hoped to develop the Land of Israel in preparation for the biblically prophesized return of the Jews. This would hasten the second coming of the Christian messiah. Adams had been a follower of the Mormon Church, but quit the religion following the assassination of Mormon founder Joseph Smith in 1844. Most of the congregants of the Church of the Messiah that Adams founded lived in Maine.

Departing the United States, Adams stated: “We believe the time has come for Israel to gather home from their long dispersion to the land of their fathers. We are going [to Jaffa] to become practical benefactors of the land and people, to take the lead in developing its great resources.”

Proto-Zionists, their purpose was not to missionize but to assist the Jewish people in returning to their ancestral land. However, though equipped with the latest agricultural tools, 22 pre-fab houses and religious fervour, the colonists’ mission was doomed. Arriving in Jaffa, they learned that Adams had not yet purchased the land on which they planned to settle. Instead, they pitched their tents on the beach near a cemetery where the victims of a recent cholera epidemic were buried. Within six months, 22 of the 157 settlers, including nine children, were dead.

Disease was not the settlers’ only problem. After finally buying the property for their neighbourhood, the first outside of Jaffa’s Ottoman ramparts – Tel Aviv would only be founded 43 years later, in 1909 – the pioneers quickly learned that farming in the arid Middle East was nothing like agriculture in rainy New England.

Facing starvation and soaring mortality, Adams sought solace in alcohol. Within two years after their arrival, all but two dozen or so members of the American Colony had returned to the New World. Their buildings were sold to newly arrived German evangelical Christians. Known as Templars, the Germans developed seven colonies across Palestine until being arrested by the British in 1939 as Nazi sympathizers. They were deported to Australia or sent back to the Third Reich in prisoner exchanges.

Among the Americans who remained was Rolla Floyd (1832-1911), a pioneer of Israel’s tourism business. In 1869, he opened the stagecoach service from Jaffa to Jerusalem on the newly paved road. The journey from the coast to the mountains took 14 hours: today’s high-speed train covers the same distance in 29 minutes, with a stop at Ben-Gurion Airport.

The Maine settlers were not forgotten, thanks to Reed Holmes: in 1942, the historian met an elderly woman who had been 13 when the Nellie Chapin dropped anchor. After four decades of research, Holmes published The ForeRunners. Around the same time, he organized a tour of Israel. Among the participants was Jean Carter, a licensed contractor from Massachusetts. Touring the former American Colony, she was aghast to learn that the decrepit, historic wooden houses were about to be torn down.

Raised in a Protestant church, Carter had a master’s degree in Jewish studies and was fluent in Hebrew. She persuaded the Israeli government to declare the former colony a heritage site, received a promise that any structure that could be preserved would be spared demolition, and got the Tel Aviv municipality to erect a plaque on the beach where the Maine colonists had landed.

Holmes and Carter fell in love and eventually married. In 2002, they purchased Wentworth House – one of the remaining American Colony buildings. With the help of specialists in 19th-century building preservation techniques from Maine, the couple spent two years restoring the ruin and removing later additions. Today restored as the Maine Friendship House, it houses a museum about Jaffa’s American Colony.

The Holmes, who live in Peace Valley, Me., were honoured in 2004 by the Maine Preservation Society – the first time the group recognized a project outside of New England.

Unrelated to Jaffa’s American Colony is a Jerusalem settlement of the same name. The eponymous luxury hotel where foreign journalists like to belly up to the bar was founded in 1881 as a commune – Israel’s first kibbutz – by members of a Protestant utopian society led by Horatio Spafford of Chicago (1828-1888), who penned the Evangelical hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.”

Spafford and his wife Anna (1842-1923), together with a group of 14 adults and five children, expected Jesus’s second coming imminently. While waiting, the members of the pietistic settlement of Yankees and Scandinavians served the Holy City’s many destitute by opening soup kitchens, hospitals, orphanages and other charitable ventures.

photos - Horatio Gates Spafford and Anna Spafford, circa 1873. In 1881, a Protestant utopian society led by Horatio Spafford founded the American Colony in Jerusalem — Horatio Gates Spafford and Anna Spafford, circa 1873. In 1881, a Protestant utopian society led by Horatio Spafford founded the American Colony in Jerusalem. *(photos from Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)*

Much of that charity was funded by the American Colony Photo Department, which became the community’s primary income. Many of those early images fall into the category of Orientalism, for which the West had a seemingly insatiable appetite. But part of that artistic achievement was due to fortuitous timing – the colony’s photographers began operating at a time when tourism to the Holy Land, especially from America and Europe, was beginning en masse.

Moreover, “with the advent of halftone printing in the 1880s, images were now becoming more accessible to the public via printed matter – books, magazines and newspapers – where they were now reproduced alongside text,” notes Tom Powers in his 2009 work Jerusalem’s American Colony and Its Photographic Legacy. (Before that, photographs could only be pasted into books by hand, as individual prints.)

A third factor was getting off to a good start, thanks to plain luck. The first sizeable project of the American Colony documentarians was the1898 state visit of Imperial Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II and Empress Augusta Victoria to the Holy Land.

Interested in seeing the American Colony Photo Department’s 22,000 historic photographs archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC? Visit loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Kiki more than a muse

History is fickle. Who becomes known as great in their field, whose work is displayed in museums or taught in schoolbooks? When there is a tangible product – a building, a painting, a book, whatever – the chances seem higher that you’ll be remembered. But what if you were mainly a muse to others, what if you could enthrall audiences with your voice but never recorded an album, if you created works of art that people liked and even bought, but you didn’t create in the popular style of the day, or you were a woman in a man’s world?

Most readers will not have heard of Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin in 1901, in Châtillon-sur-Seine, about 240 kilometres southeast of Paris, to an unwed mother who wasn’t much into mothering. But most would likely recognize her – she modeled for many an artist (Alexander Calder, Tsuguharu Foujita, Amedeo Modigliani, to name a few, as well as Maurice Mendjizky, with whom she fell in love for awhile). And, during her seven-year relationship with surrealist photographer Man Ray (who thought himself more of a painter), she posed for him many a time. In 2022, one of Ray’s most famous images of her, called “Le Violon d’Ingres,” sold for $12.4 million, the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.

Yet, what of her own work, her talents, her accomplishments?

Cultural historian Mark Braude gives Kiki her overdue due with his latest book, Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris, which Braude will discuss with University of British Columbia professor emeritus of history Chris Friedrichs at the JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 24, in an event called Art & History: Paris, Jews and Surrealism.

While Kiki wasn’t Jewish, so many of the artists she hung out with were, including, of course, Ray, who was born Emmanuel “Manny” Radnitzky. If she hadn’t lived among the who’s who of Dada and Surrealist art, perhaps she wouldn’t have been overshadowed, mostly forgotten. She was a commanding performer, she sold at least a few dozen paintings, wrote a memoir, appeared in films. By all accounts, a success. But, as “Queen of Montparnasse,” the early-1900s bohemian paradise in Paris, Kiki lived on the more wild side. Addiction would speed along her end – she died in 1953, only 51 years old. Another reason, perhaps, that her legacy was not as lasting.

As much as Braude’s account is about Kiki, it is about the time in which she lived and the people among whom she lived. Because, “as she experienced her era and channeled that experience into her art, Kiki shared drinks and cigarettes and ideas with many of the people who would shape how their century saw and thought and spoke: Modigliani, Stein, Picasso, Barnes, Matisse, Guggenheim, Calder, Duchamp, Breton, Cocteau, Flanner, Hemingway,” writes Braude. “And Man Ray, whose emergence as a modern artist must be understood as intimately linked to her own.”

While Kiki may not have left much physical evidence behind of her influence, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t influential. Living as she did, with whom she did, Braude writes: “Evolving in concert with them, watching them become who they were, challenging them and joking with them, working with them and through them, Kiki, too, played her role in shaping the cultural history of the past hundred years.”

Braude’s book is not only a fascinating read, but a reminder that none of us is insignificant. Even if our names are lost to history, we matter, we impact others and the world around us.

For the full book festival schedule, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

A picture is worth a thousand words

In the first few years of 1900, my paternal grandparents – who had been married since 1886 – came to a decision. Economic life in Pinsk was too challenging and a drastic lifestyle change was required. So, in 1905, my grandfather, Yehiel Rubachka, age 34, journeyed alone from Pinsk (then under control of czarist Russia) to find work in Toronto. He knew Yiddish and a bit of Russian, having served in the Russian army for three years. He left behind my 27-year-old grandmother, Liba, and their four young children, Bessie (born in 1899), David (1902), Minnie (1903) and Herschel (1905), in Pinsk Karlin. Today, Karlin might be called a suburb of Pinsk.

On the one hand, Pinsk, with its sizeable and well-organized Jewish population (according to Yad Vashem, 21,819 or 77.3% of the city’s population, in 1896) offered the comfort of the familiar. On the other hand, living conditions were not good. By the time my grandfather left Pinsk, he and my grandmother had buried five children. There were also political and social issues, such as the fact that, in czarist Russia, Jews by and large lived under restrictions: forbidden to settle or acquire land outside the cities and towns, legally limited in attendance at secondary school and higher schools, virtually barred from legal professions, denied the right to vote for municipal councilors, and excluded from serving in the navy or the guards. Not to mention the repercussions of the failed 1905 Russian revolution, and the deaths and damage done by periodic Cossack attacks.

It is not clear what my grandfather’s relocation ultimately meant. For all intents and purposes, entering Canada was fairly easy; he did not need a passport or a visa to enter the country. But did he go to Toronto to test the waters so to speak – perhaps Canada would turn out to be no better than eastern Europe? Or was his plan, from the start, to make enough money to bring over the rest of the family? Or was it all left open-ended? On the birth certificate of one of my aunts, his occupation in Canada was listed as a (humble) rag collector.

In any case, around 1906, my grandparents decided a family portrait was needed. (Since my Uncle Herschel still looks like an infant, this photo was probably produced earlier than the 1910 date my father held to.) The problem, of course, was that the family was based in two distant locations, Toronto and Pinsk. So how was such a picture taken?

photo - Deborah Rubin Fields' grandfather and family — A family living on separate continents in the early 1900s has a photo with everyone in it. *(photo from Deborah Rubin Fields)*

According to Rita Margolin, a Yad Vashem historian, glass plate negatives were in use from the 1850s through the 1920s. They were popular with both amateur and professional photographers. In these years before courier and other delivery services, it would have been tricky to safely send glass negatives, they might have shattered in mailing. This suggests that some other method was used for putting together the two photos that became the family portrait.

Margolin further elaborated that a Pinsk photographer named Rendall might have made the composite image, as he was active in Pinsk in 1910. She pointed out, however, that photographers generally displayed their name on the photos they took, and my family’s photo is lacking a signature both on the front and the back side. (It is probably not a good idea with my unskilled hands to search for a signature by separating this very old photo from the cardboard to which it is pasted.) The lack of signature might mean that the photo I have is a copy and not the original.

Early 20th-century photo studios preferred photomontage – the production of images by physically cutting and joining combined photos – to create, for instance, tall-tale postcards. Tall-tale postcards are also known as “exaggerations.” Examples of these kinds of postcards include hilarious old farming photos in which farmers are seen pushing a wheelbarrow or a wagon containing giant harvested onions or enormous potatoes.

According to my father, the late Sidney (also known by his Yiddish name, Sheya) Rubin, z’l, my grandfather was added to the picture. One photographer with whom I consulted agreed that this is a likely scenario, as normally the head of the family would be prominently featured in the front, rather than the back, row of a photo.

In my family’s photograph, my grandmother is standing, facing the camera, straight on and straight-faced. My Aunt Bessie is sitting on a wooden chair while my Aunt Minnie is sitting on what might be a tree stump. My Uncle Dave is sitting on a suitcase. The baby, my Uncle Herschel, dressed in some sort of baby’s gown, sits atop a stack of cases. My grandfather, with a somewhat wistful look on his face, is cleverly placed behind a trunk, with only his upper torso visible.

My grandfather’s family left Pinsk and joined him in Canada in 1911. Sadly, all the relatives who remained in Pinsk were killed in the Shoah. My father’s family settled at Toronto’s 13 Leonard Ave. Between 1880 and 1928, 70,000 Jews left Russian-held territory for Canada.

Four more children were born in Toronto. These included two more aunts, one uncle and my father. Rachel or Rae was born in 1911, Birdie (often called by her Yiddish name Faigel) was born in 1913, Harvey (often called Mo) was born in 1915 and my father was born in 1917. My father’s family, however, did not remain in Toronto. In 1920, they moved to the United States, settling in Chicago. Along the way, the family name was changed to Rubin. My grandfather’s first name was anglicized to Joseph and my grandmother’s first name was anglicized to Elizabeth (or Lizzie). My grandfather became a naturalized American citizen in 1953. By that time, he had been living in the United States for more than 30 years but, still, he signed his naturalization papers in Yiddish.

As a child, I remember visiting the street where my father had lived as a young child. Perhaps surprisingly, the missionaries still had a close-by storefront. According to reports, missionaries had been “working” in the area since the time my grandfather was living in Toronto. Although they apparently succeeded in converting very few Jews, it did not stop them from trying for years on end.

Photoshop and other digital photo editing tools are a great help to today’s photographers. In the early 1900s, of course, computers and such programs did not exist. Yet, in the early 1900s, photographers on two continents managed to make a composite image nonetheless.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Photos depict Oct. 7 trauma

Batia Holini’s photo of Israeli soldiers sleeping on the floor of a grocery store near Kfar Aza on Oct. 8 is one of the works in the exhibit Album Darom. (photo by Gil Zohar)

Album Darom: Israeli Photographers in Tribute to the People of the Western Negev, which opened recently for a six-month temporary installation at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, is the first group artistic endeavour in Israel to confront the tragedy of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and the subsequent Gaza War, now in its 10th month. The ambitious tripartite installation Album Darom (Hebrew for Southern Album) incorporates a Facebook diary; a printed book of photographs accompanied by essays (published by Yedioth Ahronoth); and the museum exhibit.

Initiated by Prof. Dana Arieli, dean of the faculty of design at the Holon Institute of Technology, together with chief curator Irena Gordon, the project showcases 150 photographs, art installations and texts documenting the story of the western Negev region before and after Oct. 7. The exhibit includes the perspectives of 107 photographers and artists. Some of the participants in the album are world-renowned, others are amateurs. Lavi Lipshitz, the youngest featured photographer, lost his life fighting in Gaza. His mother penned the text accompanying his images.

The works in the album represent different photographic practices: artistic, personal and some staged, the intense images are upsetting. As well they should be in confronting mass murder.

Before walking around a corner to see Lali Fruhelig’s gruesome 3-D installation suggesting a corpse sprawled on the floor of a living room, a sign cautions: “The exhibition contains some potentially disturbing contents. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Arieli, a history professor and a photographer who explores remembrance culture and cultural manifestations of trauma, began the Album Darom project shortly after the Gaza war broke out.

“When something’s traumatic, you have to work or do something,” she said.

Shocked by the murder of her friend Gideon Pauker from Kibbutz Nir Oz – who was killed just before his 80th birthday – she posted 100 daily historic and contemporary images of the Western Negev.

Initially, Arieli intended Album Darom to be exhibited at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai Museum just north of the Gaza Strip frontier. After the museum was damaged by rocket fire, this wasn’t feasible. Instead, she selected Petach Tikvah as the venue. She explained that the site – the first Yad Labanim memorial to fallen Israel Defence Forces soldiers from the War of Independence – is meant to be relevant to all Israelis. The museum offers free admission on Saturday, so observant Jews may visit on Shabbat.

Speaking to a group of journalists, Arieli compared Oct. 7 to the Nov. 4, 1995, assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. “Everyone is frozen in their memory of where they were,” she said.

Arieli and Gordon emphasized the intended cathartic nature of the exhibit. The two said the museum is a “safe space” and a “place for healing.” After experiencing the horrors of Oct. 7, Gordon found solace in this project, she added. “This is part of how we are coping with it all,” she said.

Miki Kratsman is one of the photographers whose depiction of his Oct. 7 nightmare is in the exhibit. Terrorists took his aunt Ophelia hostage from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. She was later released from Gaza in the November hostage exchange deal.

Kratsman’s photograph, “In Aunt Ophelia’s Neighbourhood,” captures a modest kibbutz home collapsing as it is immolated in a fireball.

“These are the kinds of things that need to be in a museum,” Arieli said of the photograph. “You’re looking at the destruction of Nir Oz.”

While vividly showing the devastation of the kibbutz, the burning home photograph is an enigma, and creates dialogue, she added.

But it is the human toll rather than the destroyed real estate that is most painful. Paradoxically, perhaps, Batia Holini’s peaceful photo of exhausted IDF soldiers sleeping on the floor of a grocery store near Kfar Aza on Oct. 8 hints at the savage warfare in which they have been engaged.

photo - “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” a photo by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv — “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” a photo by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

Avishag Shaar-Yashuv’s photograph, “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” captures the searing emotion of the funeral of a family annihilated in the Hamas attack.

“I tried to focus and also wipe the tears at the same time,” Shaar-Yashuv said.

For this reviewer, the most symbolic part of the exhibit was a taxidermy display of a doe entitled “Bambi.” The exhibit references Felix Salten’s 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods and the 1942 animated movie produced by Walt Disney. Metaphorically, the hapless baby deer represents both the Six Million victims of the Holocaust and the 1,200 people murdered on Oct. 7.

Viewing Album Darom, one could conclude that the myth of the state of Israel protecting its citizens has been shattered. Arguably, Israelis today are no more secure than their ancestors were facing the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, the Hebron Massacre of 1929 or the Farhud in Baghdad in 1941.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Tzimmes helps close festival

Left to right, Tzimmes’s Saul Berson, Yona Bar Sever and Moshe Denburg perform in the Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social on Nov. 5. (photo from Heart of the City)

A festival favourite, Tzimmes, will perform at the 20th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, taking part in the Nov. 5 Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social, which closes out the 100-plus live and online events that take place at more than 40 venues over 12 days.

Presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre with the Carnegie Community Centre, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and other community partners, this milestone year of the festival – with the theme “Grounded in Community, Carrying it Forward” – starts Oct. 25.

“We have performed at DTES Heart of the City Festival on several occasions over the years,” Tzimmes founder and band leader Moshe Denburg told the Independent.

“November 2008 was the first time and, two years later, in October 2010, we performed again. We were invited a few years ago, in the fall of 2020, but couldn’t make it due to a scheduling conflict.”

In addition, said Denburg, a small group from the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), which Denburg founded, played the festival in 2011. “The repertoire was, of course, intercultural, but included klezmer and Hebraic pieces as well,” he said. “Every time we played the festival, there was a truly welcoming atmosphere, and I would like to say it is an honour to be part of the mitzvah (good deed) that Heart of the City is performing for the neediest amongst us.”

“For 20 years, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in the Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the cultural practices of the community,” notes the press release. “The festival works with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward our community’s stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences and artistic processes to illuminate pathways of resistance and resilience.” The festival’s mandate “is to promote, present and facilitate the development of artists, art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.”

The closing event at which a trio of musicians from Tzimmes will play – Denburg (lead vocal/guitar), Yona Bar Sever (lead guitar/backup vocal) and Saul Berson (clarinet/flute/saxophone) – will also feature the Barvinok Choir, Dovbush Dancers and the Vancouver Ukrainian Folk Orchestra. The concert will be opened by cultural speaker Bob Baker of the Squamish Nation and DTES resident, artist, poet and community activist Diane Wood will read “100 Years of Struggle” by the late Sandy Cameron, an historian and poet, among other things, who was very involved in the Downtown Eastside.

About what the Tzimmes trio will play at the concert, Denburg said, “The Tzimmes repertoire is always made up of Jewish music in the larger world context. So, there will be aspects of klezmer and Yiddish song (European), Ladino (Judeo-Spanish/Mediterranean), and pieces in a more Middle Eastern style as well. If anyone wants a primer on our repertoire, they can visit our YouTube page: @BigTzimmesProductions. Have a look/listen to ‘Dror Yikra,’ ‘Cuando’ and ‘Moishe’s Freylakh,’ and you’ll get an idea of what’s to come.”

The Independent last spoke with Denburg in 2021 about Tzimmes’s then-new two-CD album The Road Never Travelled. Since that interview, the group released, in 2022, a remixed and remastered version of their first album, calling it Sweeter and Hotter.

“In 2020, as we were creating our fourth album, The Road Never Travelled, I realized that there was almost enough material for a second disc, but it needed a few more pieces,” said Denburg. “Around that time, my dear friend and band mate, Yona, suggested that I try to remix our debut recording. We always felt that we were constrained by a simpler technology back in 1993, and that certain aspects of the mix could be improved – vocals could be clearer, instruments brought into better relation and so on. Looking around, I found a fine facility in Red Bank, N.J., that specialized in transferring old reel-to-reels to a digital format. The tapes of Sweet and Hot were 27 years old, but they transferred wonderfully to digital tracks.

“On the second disc of The Road Never Travelled, we included several remixed liturgical pieces from Sweet and Hot,” Denburg said, noting that the group continued the process and worked on every track of their 1993 debut album. He said, “The result, we believe, is an enhanced version of Sweet and Hot that does not compromise the original at all; in fact, we humbly submit, the result of all this work is that the sweet parts are even sweeter, and the hot stuff even hotter!”

The closing concert/social of the Heart of the City Festival – called Building Community: 20 Years of Friendship – takes place at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, with doors opening at 2 p.m. and the concert at 3 p.m. Tickets ($30/$20) are available at eventbrite.ca.

***

photo - Among the many Heart of the City events is a month-long exhibit at Carnegie Community Centre of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20 years — Among the many Heart of the City events is a month-long exhibit at Carnegie Community Centre of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20 years. *(photo from Heart of the City)*

Among the many other events taking place during Heart of the City is an exhibit of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20-year history, curated by Vancouver Moving Theatre co-founder Terry Hunter. (For more on Cooper, see jewishindependent.ca/capturing-community-spirit.)

Cooper will attend the Nov. 1, 4 p.m., opening reception in the third-floor gallery at Carnegie Community Centre. The exhibit, which runs to Nov. 30, will feature two to four photos from each of the festival’s 20 years, displayed chronologically with the festival poster for each year.

Organizers said Cooper provided guidelines for selecting the images: “simple, elegant, expressive images with energy, movement and/or emotion that represent the cultural and social diversity of the festival’s programming and people.” The exhibit also will include photos of festival participants who have passed away.

For more information, visit heartofthecityfestival.com.

This year’s book award winners

The fourth edition of the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards, presented by the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, culminated in a May 24 event at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver at which the winners in six categories – fiction, non-fiction, memoir/biography, children and youth, poetry, and Holocaust writing – were announced.

Winning the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for fiction was Simon Choa-Johnston for House of Daughters, a stand-alone sequel to The House of Wives. Based on the author’s family, this multi-generational family saga opens when Emanuel Belilios, a wealthy Jewish opium oligarch, suddenly leaves Hong Kong, and his junior-wife, Pearl, blames Semah, the senior-wife. Pearl kicks Semah out of the mansion where the polyamorous trio had lived and shuns everyone, including her daughter. This is a story of passions and regrets, wealth and survival, set in Eurasian Hong Kong’s high society.

In the non-fiction category, the Pinsky Givon Family Prize went to Alan Twigg, editor of Gidal: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal, a selection of letters between Israeli Tim Gidal, a pioneer in photojournalism, and Vancouver scholar and art collector Yosef Wosk. In the late 1920s, with his handheld Leica, Gidal was able to travel in interwar Europe, capturing rare images of Polish Jews prior to the Holocaust. Wosk first encountered Gidal’s work in a magazine in 1991 – the photo “Night of the Kabbalist” captivated him. Wosk was determined to meet the photographer and eventually did. The two became close and the letters – selected by Twigg from hundreds the friends exchanged over two decades – both memorialize Gidal as an artist, scholar, historian of photography and “hero among the Jewish people,” and also capture the essence of Gidal and Wosk’s friendship.

The Cindy Roadburg Memorial Prize for memoir/biography was given to Marsha Lederman for Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed. In it, Lederman delves into her parents’ Holocaust stories in the wake of her own divorce, investigating how trauma migrates through generations. At the age of 5, Lederman asked her mother why she didn’t have any grandparents, and her mother told her the truth: the Holocaust. Decades later, her parents having died and now a mother herself, Lederman began to wonder how much history had shaped her life and started her journey into the past, to tell her family’s stories of loss and resilience.

Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman (with Susan McClelland) took the Diamond Foundation Prize for children and youth writing. In 1945, Robbie Waisman, then Romek Wajsman, had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured and had no idea if his family was alive. Along with 472 other boys, these teens were dubbed “the Buchenwald Boys.” They were angry at the world for their abuse, and turned to violence: stealing, fighting and struggling for power. Few thought they would ever be able to lead functional lives again, but everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation.

The Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for poetry went to Tom Wayman’s Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time, which explores the question of how to live in a natural landscape that offers beauty while being consumed by industry, and in an economy that offers material benefits while denying dignity, meaning and a voice to many in order to satisfy the outsized appetites of a few. A cri de coeur from a poet who has long celebrated the voices of working people, the collection also grapples with why “anyone, in this era so profoundly lacking in grace, might want to make poems – or any kind of art.”

Rounding out the awards was the Kahn Family Foundation Prize for Holocaust writing, which was given to But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust by Charlotte Schallié (editor) and illustrators Miriam Libicki, Barbara Yelin and Gilad Seliktar. But I Live is a co-creation of the novelists and four Holocaust survivors: David Schaffer, brothers Nico and Rolf Kamp, and Emmie Arbel. Schaffer and his family survived in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators; in the Netherlands, the Kamps were hidden by the Dutch resistance in 13 different places; and, through the story of Arbel, who survived Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, we see the lifelong trauma inflicted by the Holocaust. The book includes historical essays, a postscript from the artists and words of the survivors.

Each category in the 2023 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards was assessed by five jurors, in different configurations, from the following professionals: Linda Bonder, a retired librarian; Susanna Egan, professor emeritus of literature in English from the University of British Columbia; Dave Margoshes, who writes fiction and poetry on a farm west of Saskatoon; Norman Ravvin, a writer, teacher and critic living in Montreal; Rhea Tregebov, an author of fiction, poetry and children’s picture books, and a retired professor in the UBC Creative Writing Program; Elisabeth Kushner, a librarian and writer living in Vancouver; Karen Corrin, former head librarian of the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library at the JCC; Nicole Nozick, former executive director of the Vancouver Writers Fest and former director of the JCC Jewish Book Festival; and Anita Brown, who is working with the Waldman Library.

Daniella Givon, chair of the awards committee, introduced the May 24 event, sharing a bit about the awards and thanking all the sponsors and participants for the high calibre and diversity of the submissions. The winning authors then said a few words, and Dana Camil Hewitt, director of the JCC Jewish Book Festival, closed the proceedings with more thank yous, and an invitation for everyone to purchase and enjoy the books.

– Courtesy Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival