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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Tag: Soviet Union

A life-changing meeting

A Visit to Moscow is a beautifully illustrated and haunting graphic novel. In a brief 72 pages, it relates the story of an American rabbi who, on a 1965 trip to the Soviet Union, sneaks away from his delegation in Moscow to visit the brother of a friend – Bela hadn’t heard from Meyer for more than 10 years and was worried.

image - A Visit to Moscow book coverA Visit to Moscow (West Margin Press, 2022) is an adaptation by Anna Olswanger of a story told to her by Rabbi Rafael Grossman. It is illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg, who captures in her palette, in the angles of her images, in her use of light and shadow, scratches and blurs, the claustrophobic fear that existed in that era in the USSR.

“Although the events of A Visit to Moscow are set before my time, the overall spirit of the Soviet Union feels very similar to what it was throughout my childhood when I lived there. I didn’t have to make a big leap to connect to the time period,” writes Nayberg in a section at the end of the book, where we get to see some of her preliminary sketches.

Olswanger knew Grossman, having collaborated with him on writing projects since the early 1980s. “One of our first projects,” she writes, “was a Holocaust novel with a character based on his cousin, a leader of the Jewish resistance in the Bialystok ghetto. As we planned out the storyline, Rabbi Grossman told me about an incident during a trip he made in 1965 to the Soviet Union, where he met a young boy whose parents were Holocaust survivors. The boy had never been outside the room he was born in.

“We never finished the novel, and then, in 2018, Rabbi Grossman died.”

Years later, Grossman’s daughter sent Olswanger a box of writings that Olswanger and the rabbi had worked on. It inspired Olswanger to revisit the story. But she didn’t have the whole story, so, on the suggestion of her editor, wrote A Visit to Moscow as historical fiction.

The main part of the book is incredibly moving. The tension as the rabbi makes his way to Meyer’s last known address is palpable in both text and images; the KGB are an ever-looming threat. When he arrives, it takes the rabbi time to gain Meyer’s trust and for Meyer to let the rabbi into his flat, where he meets Meyer’s wife and their son, Zev, who has never left their home. The rabbi promises to get them all to Israel.

image - Visit to Moscow is a powerful, if incomplete, story, written by Anna Olswanger and illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg
Visit to Moscow is a powerful, if incomplete, story, written by Anna Olswanger and illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg.

This core of the novel is well-written, easily understood and powerful. Unfortunately, this mid-section is bookended by ambiguous scenes. At the beginning, Zev hovers from heaven over his dead body, which is laying somewhere in a mountain range. In the throes of dying, he remembers the story of the rabbi’s visit, which leads into the main story, after which we see young Zev on a plane, remembering the ride and Israel’s beauty. In the midst of this, he wonders, “And later – was it years later? Was he a young man?” In the next panel, a fire burns in the aforementioned mountain range and the text reads: “He remembers a sudden flash. A burst of black smoke. Burning metal.”

I first thought that he and his parents had been killed in a plane crash on the way to Israel, so close to freedom but never reaching it. After madly flipping pages back and forth in the book, trying to figure out what I’d missed, I found what I was looking for in the About the Contributors section: “For over 25 years, Rabbi Grossman visited Zev and his family in Israel. He saw them together for the last time in 1992, the year Zev died at the age of 37, a husband and father, while on reserve duty with his army unit in Lebanon.”

A tragic ending either way, but at least Zev got out of his room and got to live more fully for those 25 years. “Every time I visited Zev in Israel,” wrote Grossman, “he was smiling.”

A Visit to Moscow could have benefited from a few more pages, to make the transition of Zev’s journey from the Soviet Union to Israel more understandable, and to include some aspects of his life in Israel, even if they were fictional. Olswanger and Nayberg have created something special, but it feels incomplete.

Posted on December 9, 2022December 8, 2022Author Cynthia RamsayCategories BooksTags A Visit to Moscow, aliyah, Anna Olswanger, freedom, graphic novel, history, Israel, Rafael Grossman, Soviet Union, Yevgenia Nayberg
Reviving Jewish roots

Reviving Jewish roots

JunkOy! recently released their new 10-track album, Once Upon a Time in Odessa.

It has been busy fall for Vancouver-based ensemble JunkOy!, culminating with the promotion of a 10-track album, Once Upon a Time in Odessa. At the same time, the band is preparing a live video, getting ready for some in-person gigs and recording a second album.

JunkOy!’s repertoire is a mix of klezmer interspersed with a number of other musical genres, including jazz, ska, tango, waltz and rock and roll.

“Our songs are old Soviet chestnuts, which were written by Jews in the early 1900s but appropriated by the Soviet culture. Almost all early Soviet music was written by Jews who grew up with Yiddish and klezmer music,” said Stav Au-Dag, the group’s frontperson. The songs were translated into English by Au-Dag and reworked to eliminate the Soviet influences in the lyrics. All of JunkOy!’s songs can be performed in either English or Russian.

“The idea for this project is simple: to take Jewish music from its Soviet orchestral captivity back to its klezmer Jewish roots,” Au-Dag explained. “And a dash of Gypsy jazz and ska never hurt anyone, either.”

In addition to removing the references to the Soviet regime, Au-Dag said he and the band rearranged the songs in a more traditional klezmer style – “clarinet, violin, accordion and bass plus acoustic guitar, instead of the stuffy big Soviet orchestral music they were recorded in,” he said. “Thus, the songs are democratized and shown to be belonging to folk tradition, in which everyone could participate, rather than a part of an institutionalized culture, attainable only to the highly educated musicians and rich concert-goers.”

Many of the tracks on Once Upon a Time in Odessa draw upon the connections between early Soviet pop culture and its Jewish roots.

Two songs on the new album come from the first Soviet musical, Jolly Fellows (1934): “March of the Cheerful Pilgrims” and “Young Heart.” Both songs have postmodern lyrical contributions from Au-Dag, who added a third verse to the march and dispensed with all references to the joys of Soviet labour, while a second verse was added to “Young Heart.” Musically, Au-Dag said, “Young Heart” benefited from “Ikh Hob Dikh Tsufil Lib” (“I Love You Too Much”) by Alexander Olshanetsky and Chaim Tauber.

The song “Uncle Eli” is taken from “Der Rebbe Elimelech,” penned by Moyshe Nadir. Au-Dag said Nadir’s song is based on the British nursery rhyme “Old King Cole.” In the USSR, the song received assistance from two Jews: it was translated by Elizabeth Polonsky and Joseph Pustylnik added the instrumental part. Au-Dag has augmented the lyrics and written new choruses.

The origins of the tune “Lime-Lemons” are found in 1920s Odessa. Leib Zingerthal sang the lyrics by Yakov Yadov.  Au-Dag pointed out that the popular number dealt with the lawlessness that occurred in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War, when hyperinflation turned a person’s fortune into worthless “lemons.”

The album includes a version of “Steamship,” premièred by singer and comic actor Leonid Utyosov in 1940, and considered by some to be the first video clip in the world. The song was written for the big screen by composer Nikolai Minkh.

Two songs on this album originate in Jewish Poland. “Samovar,” with music by a teenaged Fanny Gordon (born Fayge Yoffe) and lyrics by Andrzej Włast (born Gustaw Baumritter), was written in 1929 and has a long, convoluted history. First popular in Poland, then in Lithuania, it was appropriated by Leonid Utyosov in 1933, without credit to its authors. Au-Dag said Yoffe was so scared of Utyosov, she did not claim her authorship until 1979 – when she received 12 rubles. Au-Dag has expanded the original Russian one-verse version and shifted the story to Crimea, where Gordon was born.

“Tired Sun,” meanwhile, was written by a Jewish duo, poet Zenon Friedwald and composer Jerzy Peterburgsky, in 1937. Au-Dag has added the second part to the song.

The name JunkOy! (or JunkOye!), translated as the Village of the Spirit, is derived from a community at the centre of the Jewish agricultural settlement in Crimea (1925-1941). The group consists of five musicians on stage: Au-Dag, vocals and acoustic guitar; Serge Galois, double bass; Ben McRae, clarinet; Paul Krakauer, accordion; and Masha PinkCod, vocals and violin.

Founded in Montreal in 2014, JunkOy! has been operating out of Vancouver since 2015; its members met originally through Facebook and various musical friends. They hail from throughout the globe: Crimea (Au-Dag), France and Russia (Galois), Canada (McRae), Poland (Krakauer) and Moscow (PinkCod).

To get a taste of JunkOy!’s music, venture over to YouTube and the Magical Crimea channel. There, one can find the rousing performance they gave earlier in the year at Or Shalom, where they raised money for Jewish Family Services to settle Ukrainian refugees in British Columbia.

To purchase Once Upon a Time in Odessa, send an email to [email protected].

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

Format ImagePosted on November 11, 2022November 9, 2022Author Sam MargolisCategories MusicTags Jewish music, JunkOy!, JunkOye!, Magical Crimea, Once Upon a Time in Odessa, Russian, Soviet Union, Stav Au-Dag
Journey from prison to power

Journey from prison to power

At the Freilach 25 gala on June 19, left to right, are Yocheved Baitelman, Chanie Baitelman, Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman, Natan Sharansky and Avital Sharansky. (photo by Kasselman Creatives)

Natan Sharansky, the most famous “Prisoner of Zion” and a former Israeli senior cabinet minister, shared reflections on his extraordinary life with a Vancouver audience last month.

Sharansky spoke June 19 at the Freilach 25 gala honouring Rabbi Yechiel and Chanie Baitelman on the 25th anniversary of their leadership of Chabad of Richmond. The event took place at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue.

Born in 1948 – the same year as the state of Israel – Sharansky was, like most Jews in the officially atheist Soviet Union, utterly disconnected from his Judaism. There was no brit milah, no bar mitzvah, no Jewish culture, language or tradition, he said – “What there was, was antisemitism.”

There were about 150 nationalities in the sprawling Soviet Union, each one of them identified on the fifth line of the official state identification issued to every citizen. Everyone, regardless of ethnic origin, was treated relatively equally, if not fairly, under the communist regime, with one exception. If someone said, “He has a fifth-line problem” or “the fifth-line disease,” it meant they were a Jew and, therefore, had more limited opportunities for advancement than members of the other national groups, said Sharansky.

While they had only the vaguest idea of what being a Jew meant – “There was nothing positive in this word ‘Jew,’” he said – his parents instilled in him the need to overcome the officially proscribed handicap through excellence.

“You must be the best at chess or music or whatever you’re doing,” they told him, “the best in your class, your school, your city.”

Sharansky – then called Anatoly – was 5 years old when Stalin died (on Purim). At the time, the so-called “doctor’s plot,” a Stalinist campaign to whip up antisemitism based on allegations that Jews were trying to assassinate Soviet leaders, was approaching a climax. Boris Sharansky told his two sons that the dictator’s demise was a good thing, but that they must not let on to others that they believed this.

Back at school, young Anatoly mimicked his fellow kindergarteners.

“We are crying together with all the other kids,” he said. “We are singing songs about the great leader.… You have no idea how many children are really crying and how many children are crying because their fathers told them to do it.”

This was Sharansky’s first conscious awareness of “doublethink,” the phenomenon in which Soviet citizens learned to compartmentalize what they knew from what they were supposed to know.

“You are reading what you’re supposed to read, you’re saying what you’re supposed to say, you are voting as everybody votes and you know that this is all a lie,” he recalled.

For Jews of his generation, the deracination from their heritage changed in 1967.

“The Six Day War was a big humiliation for the Soviet Union,” he said. “They had thrown in their lot with the Arabs.”

While the seemingly miraculous Israeli victory over the combined neighbouring Arab armies was notable, it didn’t change the perceptions of Soviet Jews overnight. It didn’t, for example, distract the young from their studies for university exams.

“But, over time, some things changed,” Sharansky said. “Those that loved you and those that hate you” changed their attitudes, he said. “They all look at you and say, ‘How did you Jews do it?’” Jews were upgraded, Sharansky has written. “We went from greedy, cowardly parasites to greedy, bullying hooligans.”

Soviet Jews did not consider themselves part of Israel, but at least some of their non-Jewish neighbours did. This sparked a new curiosity among Soviet Jews about their connection to Jews outside their realm and kindled pride in their identity for the first time.

Soon, smuggled copies of Leon Uris’s 1958 historical novel Exodus, about the founding of the state of Israel, found its way into circulation. The forbidden book was passed from hand to hand, not only because it was a page-turner, but because it was not the kind of book a Jew in the Soviet Union wanted sitting around the house.

Sharansky realized that the soldiers in Israel who had defeated the Arabs in 1967 were the same age as him.

“Suddenly, the university exams didn’t look so significant,” he recalled. So began a quest for identity and dissidence that would lead Sharansky to nine years in a Soviet prison, then, later, to nine years as a senior figure in Israel’s government and, later still, nine years as head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

As Jews in the Soviet Union gained consciousness about their identity – and began their “treasonous” demands to abandon the communist state for Israel – they ignited a parallel and larger fight against Soviet tyranny. In his presentation, and more deeply in his book Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People, co-authored with Gil Troy, Sharansky explained how he struggled with whether his fight was for his right to fully express his particular Jewish identity or whether it was a larger battle to free the millions of oppressed Soviets of all 150 or so nationalities.

At the same time, international solidarity that had begun as a tiny rally of Columbia University students in 1964 exploded into a massive global movement calling for the Soviets to free both “Prisoners of Zion” – those Jews imprisoned in gulags for openly confronting the Soviet powers – and the millions more Jews in the Soviet Union who were not free to leave the country.

As the Soviets grew more concerned about this international attention, they responded in two ways. They permitted some Jews to make aliyah – particularly middling troublemakers they preferred not to deal with – while imprisoning leaders like Sharansky, who soon became the leading face in the fight to free Soviet Jewry.

If Anatoly Sharanasky – who would rename himself Natan as his Jewishness evolved – was the face of the movement, his imprisonment required a voice to take up the mantle. This role was adopted by his wife, Natasha, who herself would become Avital as she, too, reconnected with her identity. As Avital Sharansky sat in the audience at Schara Tzedeck last month, her husband recounted her meetings with world leaders, Jewish community officials and anyone who would listen to her demands to free her husband.

Before being thrust into the roles of world-leading activists, Natasha and Anatoly – Avital and Natan – had a one-day honeymoon. They were hastily married and the next day she flew to Israel, not sure whether the Soviets would soon rescind her exit visa. She began her lobbying while he continued the activism that led him, three years later, to be sentenced to death by shooting for “high treason.”

Jews all over the world demonstrated, including a 250,000-person march on Washington in 1987. Soviet ambassadors in Western capitals were called in to explain their treatment of Jewish citizens. The U.S. Congress passed an amendment to a trade law, tying Jewish emigration and broader human rights issues to economic ties with the Soviets.

A Toronto man, Noah Landis (né Lantsevitsky), saw Sharansky on the news and did a little genealogy. Discovering a family connection, he contacted Irwin Cotler, Sharansky’s Canadian lawyer and later Canada’s minister of justice, who was able to go to then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau and demand that the government stand up for this relative of Canadian citizens being held hostage for his identity.

The ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev, with his liberalization programs of “glasnost” and “perestroika,” put the treatment of Soviet Jews further into the spotlight. In 1985, then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan met with Gorbachev in Geneva. At one point, Avital Sharansky, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform, accosted Raisa Gorbachev, wife of the Soviet leader, asking for her intervention. In private, Reagan demanded Gorbachev act on Sharansky’s case and, three months later, Sharansky was released, the first of the Prisoners of Zion to gain freedom. The day he was released from prison, Sharansky was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and flown to East Berlin, transported across to West Berlin and on to Israel, where he ended the very long day dancing at the Western Wall.

Sharansky’s attendance in Vancouver was to mark the quarter-century of commitment Rabbi Yechiel and Chanie Baitelman and their family have made to the B.C. community as Chabad shlichim in Richmond.

The rabbi said he felt “embarrassed and inadequate” at the recognition, saying, “Serving this community is not some great burden. It is in fact the greatest privilege imaginable.”

Baitelman spoke of the exponential growth Chabad of Richmond has seen in 25 years, including a huge increase in the number of educational programs delivered, meals prepared and shared, and youth activities, Hebrew classes and outreach programs initiated. The model of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe is one they try to emulate, said Baitelman.

“This is what we try to do – to ignite the soul of every Jew with the love of Torah, the love of Judaism and a passion for our Jewish traditions so that each person can realize their unique potential and fulfil the purpose for which he or she was created,” said the rabbi.

Chabad of Richmond is bursting at the seams, he said, and has begun a campaign to relocate to larger premises. On a personal level, Baitelman said he and his wife are not slowing down.

“We have no intentions of resting on our laurels, not for a minute,” he said. “Our work is only just beginning. Chanie and I pledge to work even harder, to grow this organization, to bolster our acts of chesed on behalf of this community, to increase the number of programs we have to offer.”

Shelley Civkin and Gayle Morris co-chaired the event. Steve Whiteside, president of Chabad of Richmond, welcomed guests, while his vice-president, Ed Lewin, offered closing remarks. Mark and Yolanda Babins introduced the keynote speaker.

Format ImagePosted on July 8, 2022July 7, 2022Author Pat JohnsonCategories LocalTags antisemitism, Baitelmans, Chabad Richmond, fundraiser, Natan Sharansky, politics, Prisoner of Zion, Russia, Soviet Union
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