podcasts

Podcasts a vital part of CJN

Ellin Bessner in the field reporting, October 2021, for her podcast, called The CJN Daily. (photo from Ellin Bessner)

Ellin Bessner is the host of The CJN Daily, one of several new podcasts featured on thecjn.ca, the Canadian Jewish News’ recently revamped website.

A veteran journalist, Bessner caught the reporting bug early in life.

“I have been a journalist since I was 10 years old – even though I didn’t know I was at the time. I was like the fictional character Harriet the Spy, writing notes about my parents’ friends,” she said of her first recollections as an aspiring member of the press.

These days, she hunts around for and discovers stories throughout the country that others might miss – all with the objective of depicting “what Jewish Canada ‘sounds’ like.”

“I read a lot, I scour the internet. There are literally stories everywhere. I don’t have enough time or enough podcasts to do [them all],” Bessner said, as The CJN Daily nears its first anniversary.

Bessner has broadcast stories on people as diverse as Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, the Montreal-born chief rabbi of the United Arab Emirates; Ashley Waxman Bakshi, a Canadian Israeli social media influencer; and Rabbi Arnold Noteh Glogauer, the first Canadian Jewish chaplain to set sail with the Royal Canadian Navy.

She also attempts to present all sides of contentious issues. During the February blockades in Ottawa, for example, she interviewed Jews who were involved in counter-protests against the truckers and two Jews (both vaccinated) who supported the convoy.

The CJN Daily has done several British Columbia stories, as well. To date, the show has aired a discussion with Aaron Levy, an Abbotsford disc jockey broadcasting about the November floods; a dispatch from a Jewish woman in Kamloops on her experience this summer in the path of British Columbia’s largest wildfire; an interview with Bernard Pinsky on security at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver; a talk with environmental activist Seth Klein after COP26, the climate change conference in Glasgow; reflections on high school graduation from King David High School’s Class of 2021; a look at the number of people converting to Judaism in Kelowna; and a report about Jews in Kamloops and their reaction to the discovery of hundreds of Indigenous child graves in their community.

“British Columbia really had a terrible year,” said Bessner. “You had drought, forest fires, smoke, Indigenous issues … security issues and hunger. There is room for a B.C. story every single day. I really try to do as many as I can.”

CJN reinvents itself

In April 2020, a month into the pandemic, the CJN closed for the second time. The first time, in 2013, it returned after several months. This latest closure ended in December 2020, with a new CJN that is mainly a digital periodical.

“They chose to close after the Pesach issue in 2020. There was no revenue coming in and they decided to shut down,” explained Bessner. “A few months later, everyone thought that was CJN’s demise. Other websites came in to fill the gap. Meanwhile, those associated with CJN had decided to pivot to digital.

“It was a good opportunity to do that while everyone was at home and Zooming,” she said. “They re-launched digitally on Facebook only and got rid of the old website. Eventually, more money came in. The CJN doesn’t have the same look as before. We are doing it in a more modern way. These are the times and we have to be with the times.”

That said, for those who want to have a more traditional copy of the paper, the CJN still offers a printable weekly digest of stories every Friday (available on its website) and The CJ Magazine, a quarterly that will have its first issue later this year.

As for The CJN Daily, its start last spring did not go off according to script, Bessner recalled. “The podcast was launched on May 3, right when the Mount Meron tragedy occurred on Lag b’Omer,” she said. “All our planned interviews on Jewish Heritage Month were rescheduled. And then Israel had a war.”

The CJN Daily provides Monday to Thursday updates on the Canadian Jewish scene, from coast to coast to coast. The show can be heard on Spotify, Apple and other podcast platforms, as well as on the CJN website. There are also extended versions of Bessner’s interviews on the CJN’s YouTube channel.

Other podcasts on the CJN roster include Bonjour Chai, a weekly current affairs show; Yehupetzville, a look at Jewish life across Canada; Rivush, interviews with Jews of Colour hosted by Rivka Campbell; Menschwarmers, “the world’s most popular Jewish sports podcast”; and A Few of My Favourite Jews, with comedian Laura Leibow.

Bessner has worked for the Canadian Press, CTV News, CBC News and JazzFM. As a correspondent, she has reported from across Canada, Europe and Africa. As a professor, she has taught journalism at Ryerson University, Seneca College and, most recently, at Centennial College.

She is the author of Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military and World War II (2018) and a contributor to Northern Lights: A Canadian Jewish History (2020). In 2019, thanks to her efforts, Veterans Affairs Canada created a section on its website recognizing the contributions of Jewish men and women who served in the Canadian military during the Second World War.

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

Edmonton’s Anne Frank statue

Officials in Edmonton unveil the first sculpture of Anne Frank in Canada. (photo by John Stobbe/Dutch Canadian Centre)

On Aug. 8, 2021, officials in Edmonton unveiled the first sculpture of Anne Frank anywhere in Canada. The world’s newest memorial to her – a life-sized bronze sculpture gifted by the Dutch Canadian Club, based in Alberta – now sits in a park in Edmonton. It is a replica of one that stands in Utrecht, Netherlands.

The unveiling marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Holland in the Second World War, and gives thanks to the Canadian soldiers who freed their country from Nazi Germany in 1945. But there’s a second meaning behind the timing – and it’s a strange coincidence. On this August weekend, 77 years ago, Nazis raided the secret annex in Amsterdam, where Frank and her family had been hiding for nearly two years, and arrested them. A few days later, they were sent to the Westerbork transit camp and, later, they would be shipped to Auschwitz.

On the Aug. 9 CJN Daily Podcast (ellinbessner.com/the-cjn-daily-podcast), readers can hear from the people who pushed for the statue and raised $75,000 to create and erect it, as well as from Gillian Horwitz, who runs Holocaust programming for the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, and Steve Shafir, the federation’s president, who were at the unveiling ceremony in person.

– For more Jewish national news, visit thecjn.ca

Kitchen Stories Season 2

Kind Café’s carrot lox is just one of the foods you’ll hear about during the podcast’s second season. (photo by Tosha Lobsing)

Looking for something to listen to? The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia’s podcast The Kitchen Stories is back!

The Kitchen Stories explores culture, identity and community goings-on through conversations about food. Many of us have missed being able to connect with loved ones over food during the COVID-19 pandemic, and our relationships to shared meals and gatherings have had to shift. The Kitchen Stories is a chance to tune in to those food and community connections we’ve all been craving.

photo - In the first episode of The Kitchen Stories’ new season, Michelle Dodek tells listeners about her family’s traditional Rosh Hashanah lunch — In the first episode of The Kitchen Stories’ new season, Michelle Dodek tells listeners about her family’s traditional Rosh Hashanah lunch. *(photo from Michelle Dodek)*

I’ll be chatting with kosher food suppliers, holiday meal super-hosts, and other community leaders and members about all things food. And, in keeping with Season 1, the themes we’ll be exploring this time around are varied and guests will weigh in from different perspectives and experiences. While most of the topics covered are new, we’ll be checking back in on the state of food (in)security in the Greater Vancouver Jewish community, and the organizations at the forefront of tackling it, later on in the season.

I’ve also shaken things up a little, and a few of this season’s episodes consist of longer-form interviews with guests who’ve done a lot of thinking about Judaism and Jewish food, and the ties between the two.

As I’m sure you’ve experienced, when we set out to talk about food, we inevitably end up getting into so much more. I’ve had a great time discussing with my guests their views on questions like, How can we draw from Jewish tradition to help others? How can we use food to break down barriers in our community? Is being vegan a Jewish activity? I even put on my detective hat and dug deep into the mysteries of a secret family recipe.

The universality of food and its many symbolisms mean that every episode of The Kitchen Stories is different from the last and, just like a big holiday meal, we’ve got something for everyone.

The first few episodes of Season 2 of The Kitchen Stories will hit the airwaves starting March 4, with new episodes released weekly after that. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out Season 1 episodes at jewishmuseum.ca/the-kitchen-stories, on Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts.

Liana Glass is producer and host of The Kitchen Stories, Season 2.

Community milestones … Rosenblatt, Klein, Cohen Weil

Dr. Cirelle Rosenblatt (photo from pesachonthemountain.com)

The Stroke and Brain Injury Assistance Organization (BINA), based in New York, awarded Dr. Cirelle Rosenblatt their Brain Injury Leadership Award on Jan. 24.

Created in 2003, BINA provides guidance and support to thousands of stroke and brain injury survivors and their families. Dr. Rosenblatt has been involved with BINA since its early days.

Dr. Rosenblatt has worked as a neuropsychologist for more than 25 five years in a wide range of rehabilitation medicine settings. She is a sought-after expert in neuropsychological evaluation and therapy.

Dr. Rosenblatt trained and worked at leading facilities in the United States prior to moving to Vancouver with her family in 2003.

She founded and is currently the clinical director of Advance Concussion Clinic (ACC). Located in Vancouver and Surrey, ACC is British Columbia’s only dedicated concussion clinic. She also serves as a consultant to national and Olympic snow athletes and teams, and other professional and competitive athletes.

Mazal tov to Dr. Cirelle Rosenblatt!

* * *

Alison Klein was selected to participate in the CBC Hot Docs Podcast Career Accelerator, which took place during the CBC Hot Docs Podcast Festival (Jan. 27-29). She was one of 70 emerging Canadian audio creators chosen for their innovative Canadian podcasts. Alison’s show, The Self Advocate, was created to provide a forum to talk to people with cognitive disabilities who advocate for themselves. It can be heard on Co-op Radio 100.5 FM or coopradio.org, and is available on Spotify and other podcast providers.

* * *

photo - Ayelet Cohen Weil — Ayelet Cohen Weil *(photo from Louis Brier Foundation)*

The board of directors of the Louis Brier Foundation recently announced the appointment of Ayelet Cohen Weil as the new executive director of the foundation. With more than 12 years of experience working in Jewish community organizations, both in British Columbia and in Israel, Cohen Weil brings an impressive background in nonprofit management, fundraising, strategic planning, community relations and development.

Prior to joining the foundation on Feb. 1, Cohen Weil held the position of associate director of community engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, as well as manager of women’s philanthropy and manager of major gifts for Jewish Federation’s annual campaign. Her previous experience includes working in academia at the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya, as well as serving as managing director of Hillel BC. She holds a master’s degree in public policy, conflict resolution and mediation, with international mediation certification and distinction from Tel Aviv University.

The Louis Brier Foundation has a broad perspective and commitment in fulfilling its mission statement, and raising funds to maintain and foster the well-being, care and happiness of the seniors of the Snider Campus, site of the Louis Brier Home and Hospital and the Weinberg Residence.

“This year, one like no other, and after more than 12 years of working in Jewish communal life and being exposed to the many facets of the fabric of our community, I have been pondering upon the vitality in embracing, more than ever, the value of caring warmly and worthily for our seniors, the ones who built our community for us in the first place,” said Cohen Weil. “They are the living examples of our aspirations: the builders, the thinkers, the visionaries, the creators.

“I started working with the young generation in my years in Hillel and then at Federation across the community…. I truly wish to impress upon the younger generation how important this is for immediate family members and for the kavod we owe to our elderly. I would love to raise even more the profile of the centrality of this foundation in our community across all generations. This, for me, is thinking of the fabric of our Jewish community … in its full cycle and in its entirety. This is what excites me the most – to hopefully be able to contribute and create a large impact where it’s mostly needed after what we have experienced in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic…. To now be part, as well, of ensuring that the physical, mental and spiritual needs of our Jewish seniors are met so that they have a life of dignity, fulfilment and happiness, which they so much deserve…. Anything that would bring an extra smile, a feeling of comfort and warmth to Jewish seniors in our community is never too much, and I am incredibly excited and humbled for this opportunity.”

Community milestones … Green Thumb & Klein

Patrick McDonald will hand the artistic reins of Green Thumb Theatre to Rachel Aberle in January. (photo from Green Thumb Theatre)

After a distinguished 32-year tenure, Patrick McDonald recently announced that he will be stepping aside as artistic director of Green Thumb Theatre at the end of 2020. After several seasons working closely with McDonald, Green Thumb’s associate artistic director and award-winning theatre artist, Rachel Aberle, will assume the role, effective Jan. 1, 2021.

McDonald has led Green Thumb Theatre since 1988. The theatre organization, which was founded in 1975, tours to schools and other venues across the country and internationally. McDonald’s dedication to placing youth engagement and artistic integrity on an even plane has underpinned the organization’s mission of providing socially engaged professional live performance to young people, regardless of geographic or economic status.

“I am proud of how, as a company, we have stayed to course over the last three decades continuing to create new, engaging and challenging work about the issues young audiences are dealing with,” said McDonald. “ I am especially proud of the number of scripts we have brought forward that are now a part of the growing canon of theatre for young audience scripts produced worldwide.”

As performing arts organizations across the globe face uncertainty and calls for innovative programming, McDonald is confident he is leaving the theatre in good hands, stating: “Rachel Aberle, in collaboration with general manager Breanne Harmon and our current staff, will, without doubt, continue this legacy and meet the current challenges head-on. They are ready, and they will do well.”

Aberle, who made her professional performance debut with the company, has penned two critically acclaimed plays for the organization. Her play Still/Falling, which explores themes of adolescent mental health, premièred in 2015 and has been performed more than 180 times across North America and received a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for significant artistic achievement. The Code, which explores themes of consent and cyberbullying, premièred in 2018 and was recognized with a Jessie Award for outstanding production, the Sydney J. Risk Prize for outstanding original script by an emerging writer, and was included on Tapeworthy blog’s Best of Stage 2018 – selected out of almost 200 shows worldwide. Aberle has held the position of associate artistic director with Green Thumb since 2017.

“I am humbled and honoured to be asked to serve as Green Thumb’s next artistic director,” remarked Aberle, who is a member of the Jewish community. “I have grown up at Green Thumb, under the mentorship and guidance of Patrick McDonald. During these difficult times, I take this role on with a deep appreciation of the complex challenges the company faces. I believe that now, more than ever, young people deserve opportunities to explore the struggles they face on a daily basis. This is the work that Green Thumb has always done, and work that I am excited to continue to do.”

During his tenure, McDonald has commissioned more than 50 new plays from emerging and established playwrights, and has directed more than 75 productions. He has been recognized for his work, including the 2009 Jessie for career achievement and, in 2013, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award. In addition to the school touring program, McDonald established mainstage production partnerships with more than 20 arts organizations nationwide and internationally.

“We are humbled to have worked with Patrick and marvel at his creativity and tenacity in moving youth theatre forward,” said Cheryle Beaumont, chair of the board. “With a long and committed history with Green Thumb and a wealth of experience to bring to her new role, we are most pleased to welcome Rachel Aberle to the position of artistic director this coming January.”

Harmon, said, “Patrick’s long history at Green Thumb has seen him mentor hundreds of emerging artists, administrators and playwrights, offering endless opportunities and truly elevating theatre for young people across the country. He will be leaving Green Thumb with a strong legacy.”

Looking to the future, Harmon, who is also a member of the Jewish community, added, “Rachel is passionate, knowledgeable and a true champion of ensuring young voices are represented truthfully. I look forward to our new partnership.”

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Alison Klein has been accepted to the master of arts, interdisciplinary studies, in the faculty of humanities and social sciences at the University of Athabasca. The focus of her learning is disability and how services are offered to persons with disability in Canada. She plans to use her studies to inform her work on The Self Advocate, her podcast featuring people with cognitive disabilities who advocate for themselves.

Girls funny, open and smart

Girls Gotta Eat co-hosts Rayna Greenberg, left, and Ashley Hesseltine have created careers they love. (photo from JFL NorthWest)

To say it’s a podcast about dating and relationships doesn’t begin to describe Girls Gotta Eat. Co-creators and co-hosts Rayna Greenberg and Ashley Hesseltine invite their guests to talk about pretty much anything, and pretty much as explicitly as they’d like. Recent topics include creating successful online businesses, avoiding toxic partners, managing depression, the health benefits of masturbation, and having sex with famous people – and that was on just one show.

Girls Gotta Eat celebrates its first anniversary this month, and Greenberg and Hesseltine will be in Vancouver for that milestone. The pair has two soldout performances at JFL NorthWest, which runs Feb. 14-23 (jflnorthwest.com). They were scheduled to do just one show initially, and the demand would have sold out a third, no doubt, and probably even a fourth. On Instagram, Girls Gotta Eat has garnered more than 69,900 followers in less than a year. (By the time you’re reading this article, that number will likely be more than 71,000, as the account gained 300-plus new followers in the space of two days last week.)

In addition to Girls Gotta Eat, Greenberg and Hesseltine each have other ventures on various platforms, including websites, Twitter and Facebook, but Instagram is where their celebrity status is most remarkable. At press time, Greenberg’s One Hungry Jew had more than 350,000 followers on Instagram; Hesseltine’s Bros Being Basic, more than 915,000, and her Fashion Dads, another 186,000. It is no wonder that a good chunk of time on the Girls Gotta Eat podcast is spent promoting advertisers’ products, mainly cosmetics and fashion. These women have worked hard to secure an enviable target market – their 30-something peers who have money to spend.

While Girls Gotta Eat generally focuses on one topic or guest, Greenberg and Hesseltine try to cover a range of topics and have different guests for the live version, as well as make the show an interactive experience for the audience.

“We typically try to have a guest that has already been on the podcast,” Greenberg told the Independent in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles, where she and Hesseltine were performing.

“It’s rare,” she said, “that we go to a new city and invite somebody we’ve never had on the show. Just because our audience is so invested in the show and they love it, it’s so exciting for them to be able to also see another person that was on the show.”

The weekly podcast now averages well over an hour. In its first several months, it was about 45 minutes, the approximate length of a commute to work, said Greenberg.

“As we had more and more guests, the show just became really fun. We want guests to feel like they can cover a range of topics and we don’t want to truncate the show, something that’s great,” she explained. “We don’t want to hold ourselves to 45 minutes if it’s great content, so it’s just gotten a little longer. There was no day where we woke up and said, let’s do an hour-and-a-half. So, it just depends on the guests; some episodes are going to be 45, some are going to be an hour-and-a-half, we’ll see when the guests come in.”

For Greenberg, the podcast was a huge departure from what she had been doing before.

“I’ve worked in restaurants, I went to culinary school and then I really worked in tech startups for a long time,” she said.

The Girls Gotta Eat podcast was Hesseltine’s idea initially.

“She is a comedian herself and she really wanted to do a show about dating and relationships, and wanted to find somebody that would be open and honest about their own lives and also could be funny,” said Greenberg. “She and I met on a press trip because we both have very large Instagram influencer accounts, and we just really hit it off. We had a great time with each other, we became friends over the course of a few months, and then she asked me if I’d be interested in doing this.”

As soon as the idea came up, said Greenberg, “I decided, and she decided with me, that it wasn’t going to be a hobby or a side project, this could be what we do. So, we focused on it as a business: we built a website, we had professional photos taken, we devised a way to market this. From Day 1, there was definitely a strategy of let’s make this a business, let’s expand it.”

Greenberg had already monetized her food blog, One Hungry Jew, by doing ads for brands. “For example, a company like American Express will come to me if they’re looking to attract a younger audience that has money and they’ll say, OK, we want to create a campaign that is designed to encourage people to use our AmEx Travel and they’ll give me an idea of what they’re looking for and, obviously, a budget, a price, and it can be something like, hey, we want to encourage people to sign locally, so go to a restaurant, take a photo of yourself at the restaurant, write a caption, and they pay me for something like that. It’s clearly an ad, it says ad. That’s how, personally, I make money through social media.”

One Hungry Jew started “as a silly hobby,” said Greenberg. “I would never purposely have named a business One Hungry Jew…. I’ve always enjoyed food, I’d always worked in food, and I was in the tech startup world and I didn’t have much of a creative outlet, so I started taking photos of food with my cellphone. It’s something I always spent money on anyways, it’s what I enjoyed, and I just put them on Instagram because I wanted somewhere to put the photos. It’s just as simple as that.

“There weren’t a lot of food blogs back then…. I was one of the earlier people that started posting continuously. I had really good content, and it was really ‘right place, right time.’ It was certainly a time in the world where marketing and PR were shifting heavily to social media…. And I started getting invited to all these places for free, for a free meal in exchange for a photo.”

Working at Amazon at the time, Greenberg said she was splitting her focus between her job and the social media account. “I was obviously doing a bad job of both of them and I had to make a decision, so I chose. I left my job two-and-a-half years ago to pursue this full time and I worked really hard. I reached out to every single PR and advertising agency in the United States. I introduced myself, I said this is what I do, this is what makes me unique, I’d love to find time to meet. So, just like the podcast, I tried to make it into a business as opposed to a silly hobby.”

While not religious, Greenberg said, “I am exactly who I am because I was brought up in a Jewish family, I was brought up in a big Jewish community. A lot of my social activities as a child revolved around that, so I had a really nice upbringing because I was brought up in this Jewish community.”

Though her parents divorced when she was 4 years old, she said, “I have an incredibly supportive family from both sides.”

She could always talk about sex with her parents, and said her mom is a psychologist, so “we’ve always explored my feelings.”

“My mom bought me a book about puberty when I was like 11,” said Greenberg. “She wanted me to understand my body and what was happening.”

Nonetheless, she admitted to being a little nervous when she and Hesseltine started the podcast, as the pair does talk openly about their sex lives.

“It was a real struggle and a real choice that I wrestled with, how much do I talk about myself and how open am I going to be? And we both, Ashley and I, made the decision that, if we’re going to put ourselves in a public light, then we have to be honest and open about things in our life, and we both really are. And I think that’s what makes our show really good, is that people really feel like they know us, they really feel like they understand our pitfalls and our successes.”

Over the course of the year, Greenberg and Hesseltine have interviewed a wide variety of people. “We’ve had the founder of Hinge, which is a dating app, on the show; we’ve had a sex therapist; we’ve had a psychotherapist; we’ve had matchmakers; we’ve had comedians, actors and artists and all these different people. And everybody brings such a different, unique view of their own life and other people’s lives, and I feel so lucky to have amassed this huge knowledge of dating and what other people go through,” said Greenberg.

The podcast, she said, has “helped me be more calm and not so emotional, not take everything personally all the time. It’s helped me to realize that people are people and they make mistakes…. And I think that lots of people are looking for love and, just because you’re not the person they fall in love with, it’s not insulting, it’s not personal.

“It’s helped me to relax a little bit and be happy with my own life and realize that I should do other things besides focus on dating, which is funny because I do a show about dating. But, the advice I always give girls is focus on your job, focus on hobbies and friends and family and all these other things that bring so much joy your life, and that can be really fulfilling. And love will come and dating will come. And, if you’re a more whole person, it allows you to let in love in a really beautiful way.”

Brown’s model for success

Journalist Jesse Brown takes a humourous look at his homeland in The CANADALAND Guide to Canada (Published in America), written with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki.

Jesse Brown has emerged in the last few years as an important voice in the Canadian media landscape, hosting popular podcasts on media and current affairs. Brown’s CANADALAND, which started as a single weekly podcast about Canadian media hosted by him, has expanded to include a permanent staff producing a full website and a roster of podcasts covering politics, arts, media and current affairs.

A former CBC documentary producer and host, Brown is most known for breaking the Jian Ghomeshi scandal in the Toronto Star with Kevin Donovan in 2014. But it’s Brown’s media startup and podcast roster that will likely make a more lasting mark.

Brown’s pugnacious self-assurance sometimes teeters on the edge of the obnoxious, but his dogged fair-mindedness mostly outweighs small annoyances. More importantly, his content fills a necessary niche: media analysis that lacerates Canada’s haughty self-image, provocative critiques of specific people and organizations, and deep dives into under-covered Canadian stories. The mixture of salaciousness and nerdiness create an alchemy that puts the listener in the thick of critical conversations in Canada.

photo - Jesse Brown — Jesse Brown *(photo from twitter.com/@jessebrown)*

In addition to the growing news organization, Brown hasn’t lost touch with humour, arguably the way that he gained some of his first public exposure, through elaborate jokes and pranks in his university years. His book The CANADALAND Guide to Canada (Published in America), with Vicky Mochama and Nick Zarzycki, came out this spring. It’s an irreverent rundown of Canadian history, politics and social mores, including a ranking of how f-able Canadian prime ministers are and a cover illustration of Drake tenderly embracing a moose.

Brown can easily pass as a generic Canadian. But he is a Jew – a fact he neither hid nor discussed until recently. In an episode of CANADALAND this spring, Brown highlighted his Jewish identity in a discussion with members of the Jewish ethnic press about being Jewish in public, given attacks on Jewishness from both the left and the right. The CANADALAND website has begun to cover additional Jewish media stories, including the circumstances of the recent resignation of left-leaning columnist Mira Sucharov from the Canadian Jewish News.

The Independent interviewed Brown recently to ask him about his business, Jewish media in general and his new book.

Jewish Independent: CANADALAND started as a podcast where you had a single weekly conversation with someone in the media. You’ve expanded. Is everything going as planned or are you surprised at the success of this project?

Jesse Brown: Wildly surprised. When I launched the crowdfunding campaign a year into the project, I was terrified I wouldn’t get to the first goal: $1,000 a month so I could keep making the show as a part-time job. I threw “$10,000: CANADALAND the news org/podcast network” up as a fantasy reach-goal. I never expected to get it.

JI: CANADALAND the book is on-brand in the sense that it’s an irreverent takedown of fusty Canadian tropes, but it’s essentially a comedy book, which seems outside of your core mission. How did this come about?

JB: If you’re going to stick a pin in Canada’s smug superiority and its convenient mythologies, I can’t think of a better way to do that than in an hilarious book of rude jokes with good cartoons. Anything else would be a grim slog.

JI: For CANADALAND the media startup, about $200,000 comes from subscribers and another amount from sponsorship. Is it self-sustaining?

JB: It’s totally self-sustaining from crowdfunding and sponsorships. It’s not my vanity project, not something I’m ever going to bankroll out of my private bank account.

JI: In a sense, it’s not so different from what the JI does (subscriptions and advertising). The product is available for free (online, at coffee shops), but some people still buy subscriptions to get it mailed to their door. But this and other newspapers continually struggle financially. Do you think your funding model is applicable to ethnic presses?

JB: Similar model, yes. Also similar to NPR, who pioneered the model of flipping “exclusivity.” Instead of paying for content that nobody else can have, people pay for content so that everyone can have it. Ten percent of our readers and listeners make it possible for everyone else. As for tips … podcasts are generally more successful than articles at inspiring support. It’s the intimacy of the medium, the relationship between podcaster and listener. So, you should make a podcast!

JI: Community papers need to balance freedom of speech and the financial reality that the people who pay for the product are usually older and more conservative than the ones who are getting it for free. Subscriptions are lost when something controversial is published, but nothing is gained from the people who appreciate the content but don’t pay for it. Do you feel any pressure not to cross certain lines because of audience or advertisers?

JB: Not really. We only take ad money from people we don’t cover and, as for our patrons, they are of no one political stripe. I’m mindful of what I say for fear of being dumb or wrong. I don’t mind offending people when I believe what I say and, generally speaking, if I lose one patron because they disagree with me, I gain another who likes what I said. Most patrons understand that they are funding an organization with many voices, that does important original journalism in addition to punditry, and that it’s not mandatory that they agree with me in order to support CANADALAND.

As for people not paying for a Jewish newspaper, the problem is that it’s a newspaper. If someone did something like Tablet [an American Jewish online magazine] in Canada and it was really good, people would pay for it.

JI: You don’t think our community is especially thin-skinned?

JB: I think smart Jews, of which there are many, value good debate. I think some older Jews are getting calcified in their opinions, are drifting rightwards as they age, feel like they are under siege, and see themselves as defenders of the tribe, not as people engaged in a good faith conversation.

JI: In the CANADALAND podcast “Being Jewish in Public,” you said that, because attacks on you as a Jew had reached a certain threshold, it wasn’t tenable any longer to be taciturn about your Jewishness in the media, and you wanted to foreground it in a discussion with a few people who explicitly talk about Jewishness all the time. Did something change for you after doing that episode?

JB: Yes, but I’m still working it out. I increasingly feel that the public discourse around all things Jewish has been abandoned by everyone except for those with radical positions: hawkish Zionists on the one side who are increasingly in cahoots with flat-out racists, Islamophobes and even neo-Nazis. And anti-Zionists on the other side, who decry Israel in absolute terms while, in my opinion, offering little in the way of viable solutions to the conflict. So, these two camps scream at each other and the rest of us have left the building.

JI: It sounded on that episode like you thought you were the only person who believes in Israel’s existence but has strong criticisms of the government. Do you really feel so isolated in your views, which are pretty typical for centre- or left-leaning Jews?

JB: I suspect most Jews feel the same, but we keep quiet because we don’t really know what to say. I don’t pretend to know what should happen in the Middle East, but I don’t like the way that extreme views from extreme people are increasingly defining not just the Israel debate, but Jewishness itself.

JI: Ezra Levant, another notable Canadian Jew, is also running a website media startup – The Rebel – which you talk about a fair bit on CANADALAND. Is the sparring between the two of you a symptom of a healthy rivalry?

JB: Ezra is not my rival. Nobody who funds The Rebel would dream of funding CANADALAND. Our business interests are not in conflict. We cover him a lot because our job is to cover the media and The Rebel is a media company (among other things) that is being ignored in large part by the big news organizations. They claim he is beneath their contempt or that they don’t want to feed a troll but, in truth, he is very litigious, he fights dirty, and they can’t afford to hold him to account. So we do it.

JI: How can you afford it?

JB: I dunno, maybe because we have less to lose? I don’t live in fear of a legal challenge from Ezra, and his doxxing and public mobbing tactics don’t scare me. I think he’s building a hate machine, I agree with the courts that he has no regard for the truth, and I consider his harassment and disinformation campaigns quite dangerous. So, I’m not sure what we’re here for, if not to scrutinize him and hold his organization to account.

JI: You just did a show recently about the newspaper bailout proposal suggested by a newspaper industry group. Under the proposal, it sounds like small community papers like us would be eligible but not web-native reporting startups like you. You’re against the proposal. Do you think there’s a way to subsidize news that would be good?

JB: Maybe, but I’m doubtful. I think various approaches would do some good for some people, but the overall effect would be terrible, for reasons explained on the show. But there are other things the government could do that would be very helpful; for example, removing the policies that inhibit charities from doing journalism. Nonprofit donor-based models would be a good choice for the ethnic press. And prohibiting the CBC from selling digital ads, but funding them well to do (mandatory) local news reporting online, which would be available for any publication to run or build on as free wire copy content – this would be a huge boon to small news organizations.

We make the most popular Canadian podcasts. We sell companies ads on them. We turn a small profit and pay our taxes. Meanwhile, the CBC is making podcasts with tax dollars and selling ads to the same companies that we do, and they can undercut us on ad rates because they don’t need the money to survive, as we do. I support a strong public broadcaster, not some weird commercialized but subsidized broadcaster that competes with tiny startups.

Maayan Kreitzman is a PhD student in conservation biology at the University of British Columbia, who dabbles in editing, podcasting, and knitting. Follow her on Twitter at @maayanster.

Telling our stories with food

Michael Schwartz, director of community engagement at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, speaks to guests at a Chosen Food Supper Club gathering. (photo from JMABC)

This spring, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia began airing the podcast The Kitchen Stories. The series, which is focused on Jewish food, is the brainchild of Michael Schwartz, the museum’s director of community engagement.

“A podcast is not so different from a museum exhibit,” said Schwartz in an interview with the Independent. “It is a way to present a story…. It doesn’t have a visual component but, unlike a museum exhibit, people can take a podcast with them, listen to it whenever they have the time.”

While podcasts have evolved on and from the internet, Schwartz considers the format a renaissance of a much older type of media – the radio talk show. “Like radio, a podcast is an audio presentation, but on a different technological level. In the past couple of years, there have been some creative and innovative podcasts, and we’re trying to add to their number.”

The idea of a food-related podcast came to him after he experimented with a couple of other topics. “My role at the museum is to make people, both Jews and non-Jews, more aware of our museum. I tried several different themes – architecture, photography – but food seems to be universal. Everyone is interested in food, especially in Vancouver. We are a foodie city, so it seemed appropriate to ride that momentum, to let people tell their stories about food. That’s what a museum does: it lets people tell their stories. Ideally, the museum staff should be invisible.”

The Kitchen Stories concept, as well as the museum’s Chosen Food Supper Club – a dinner series where people meet each other, learn about and enjoy the food being served – crystallized for Schwartz simultaneously. “We started the podcasts a bit earlier, in March, and the supper club in April…. Lots of storytelling happens during the club meetings,” he explained. “Like the podcasts, each club meeting has a theme. Sometimes, it is geographical: food from different parts of the globe. Sometimes, thematic, like holiday food.”

photo - Chef Lior Ben-Yehuda puts the finishing touches on a salad as Erika Balcombe, left, and JMABC archivist Alysa Routtenberg look on — Chef Lior Ben-Yehuda puts the finishing touches on a salad as Erika Balcombe, left, and JMABC archivist Alysa Routtenberg look on. *(photo from JMABC)*

A similar variety of themes characterizes the podcasts. To date, shows have examined food links to family dynamics and worldwide migrations, climate and gender roles, cultural customs and regional culinary quirks.

“We brainstormed the possible themes as we listened to other podcasts, read books on culinary history. We tried to pinpoint what is missing and use those points as our guidelines. One of the underlying themes in our podcasts is the tension between traditional and modern. How people adapt to the local food sources when they move, how the familiar recipes change with times and places. How those recipes diverge when members of one family move to different countries, or continents, and the usual ingredients become unavailable.”

Schwartz believes that the museum has to be open to the stories of all Jews, regardless of their religiosity, affiliation or geographic roots. “The museum’s role is not to provide answers but to discuss a question, to open a forum for conversation. In The Kitchen Stories, food is a medium of telling stories. We explore healthy food choices and how they change with generations: what our grandmothers thought healthy and what we think healthy could be different. We talk about kosher food and organic food. And, of course, when people talk about food, everyone has an opinion.”

The topics are approached often from an historical perspective. “Food is a way to keep history alive,” Schwartz said. “When a kid asks his parents or grandparents why do you cook this way, stories emerge. We wanted to showcase those stories. Food is also a way towards peace and harmony. When we share food with friends, we talk and try to understand each other. Food is a means of communication.”

Schwartz doesn’t create the podcasts alone. Co-producer April Thompson has been working for the museum for the past year.

“I do research on the theme we select, I conduct the interviews,” Thompson said. “Sometimes we interview people in their homes or their businesses. Other times, they come here to the museum; we use a quiet room for the interviews. The museum has had an oral history program for decades, so we use the existing museum equipment for recording. Then I do the editing, choose the music. After I’m done, Michael listens to my material. He records the narration, inserts special terminology sometimes, or we move the pieces around to structure the story better.”

“April is very important to the series,” said Schwartz. “She is not Jewish, and that fact has given her an interesting angle on the project. She brings necessary curiosity to some things those of us within the Jewish community take for granted.”

“Yes,” Thompson agreed. “I’m like a child. I ask: why do you do this, because I don’t know. I want to know. I’m now working on a podcast about [dealing with] grief through food, about the Jewish shivah custom. It’s different from many other cultures.”

All of the podcasts can be found at jewishmuseum.ca/the-kitchen-stories.

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

Global Jewish cuisine

Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia hosts a new supper club and a podcast. (photo from JMABC)

The Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia is launching two new programs celebrating the diversity of food traditions represented within the B.C. Jewish community. From all corners of the world, from Baghdad to Bangalore, Kiev to Cape Town, Jewish families have made a new home here, bringing with them a wealth of culinary traditions.

One of the programs, the Chosen Food Supper Club, will give guests the opportunity to try these foods and hear the stories behind them. Why do Syrian Jews eat leeks, Swiss chard and gourds on Rosh Hashanah? What are boerewors and bobotie? How do you prepare the ultimate chicken tagine? These mysteries and more will be solved (deliciously) at the supper club, which will take place over 10 evenings between April and September. Each dining experience will run from 5-8 p.m. on a Sunday evening. Guests will enjoy a complete dinner while hearing firsthand stories from members of the Jewish community. All meals are kosher-style, not certified kosher. Tickets are $40 per person per meal, and are available at jewishmuseum.ca/programs/the-chosen-food; they must be purchased in advance.

The JMABC’s other new program is The Kitchen Stories podcast.

When we talk about food, we often end up talking about so much more. Family traditions, patterns of migration, gender dynamics, our relationship to the land. More than just a source of nourishment, food is a means of communication. And, in The Kitchen Stories series, listeners will hear what it was like to be a Jewish family living in far-flung places such as Eritrea, Chile and India. They will hear about the pressures to fit in or stand out, and how food was often a means of doing both. They will hear about the difficulty of maintaining family culinary traditions after migrating to a new country.

Podcast episodes will include community members developing new traditions or reviving long-forgotten ones, a Jew by choice who is learning to cook Jewish cuisine while not wanting to forget her own family’s food traditions, and families adopting new traditions to strengthen their relationship to the land.

The 12-episode series will be available for download on the iTunes store, Google Play, Soundcloud and at jewishmuseum.ca.