spirituality

Skills to live together

On May 26, Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan gave the public lecture From Conflict to Connection: Spiritual Community in Stressful Times at the annual conference of Vancouver School of Theology’s Inter-Religious Studies Program. (screenshot)

The Walking Together: Sharing the Work and Ideas That Call to Us conference, hosted by Vancouver School of Theology’s Inter-Religious Studies Program last month, included, as it always does, a public lecture. This year’s address was given on May 26 by Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan Kaplan, dean of the ALEPH Ordination Program, the Jewish Renewal seminary; former director of inter-religious studies at VST; and rabbi emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue. Her topic was From Conflict to Connection: Spiritual Community in Stressful Times.

Duhan Kaplan began and ended her talk with Linda Hirschhorn’s “Circle Chant,” a song about peace, human rights, environmental and intergenerational stewardship.

“If we are talking about the world, or the community, or the variety of communities as a circle,” she said, “let’s get real – it’s not a perfect circle. We are many different people doing many different things, overlapping, intersecting, sometimes clashing. That’s the kind of circle that we have, that we are working with when we try to make things whole.”

She shared a well-known quote from Rabbi Tarfon that is found in the Pirkei Avot, which she translated as Basic Aphorisms, rather than the more common Ethics of the Fathers. She read Tarfon’s adage about the day being short and the work plentiful and, while it is not up to us to finish the work, we’re not free to avoid it.

“What is the work?” the rabbi asked. “Here are some of the kinds of work that people at this conference are going to be talking about: work in climate, food security, interfaith, multicultural community, decolonization, indigenous learning, spiritual care, nonviolence, protest, arts, ritual, refugee support, theology.”

Based on the book Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty by Zygmunt Bauman, Duhan Kaplan said we’re living in a globalized world that has not delivered on its promises of integration and freedom.

“In fact, globalization has become primarily the work of a small group of highly wealthy, highly influential people, and what it has brought almost everyone else is increasing income inequality, more displaced people, more incarcerated people, more environmental devastation, more elite criminality, more precarity (that is, precarious life), more anxiety,” said Duhan Kaplan, summarizing Bauman’s ideas.

She spoke about the politics of fear and polarization, which are enforced through segregation: neighbourhoods are increasingly monoethnic and an increased police presence keeps people out of certain places, she contended. “At the national level, in many countries, we have a closing of borders.”

Cities, spiritual communities and social service agencies are left to deal with these global problems, she said, giving an example from her work.

“Let’s say we have a conflict in a class between students and teacher. The students say there’s so much in our religious tradition that is racist. And it’s true…. But, when the students speak to the teacher about it, the teacher says, young adults today don’t respect their teachers the way they used to. And that’s true too,” she said.

Direct dialogue between the parties would be ideal, but “because of habits of polarization, people are saying, no, we don’t even want to talk about it.” Rather than encouraging communication, people have suggested excluding individuals who hold opposing viewpoints, she said. “But why would we do that? We’re a microcosm of the world. We want to be that crazy, misshapen circle, and we want to live together. Isn’t that an essential pastoral skill?”

Duhan Kaplan gave another example.

“Two students in the program are tasked with leading a prayer service together and they want to pray for peace, but one of them identifies themself as an antizionist and the other one identifies themself as a Zionist, and they don’t know how to pray together for the worldwide community of Jews. They’re just paralyzed. And so, they appeal to us, the administration, and they say, tell them they’re wrong. And we say, well, we don’t do that. How about we sit in a room with both of you?… But the students are reticent to do that because, in our larger environment, what is modeled is cutting people off rather than building a community of difference.”

Duhan Kaplan talked more of Bauman, who realized that living together in a multi-class, multi-ethnic place requires skill.

One necessary skill is “the ability to work through miscomprehension – when you say something and you mean something, and somebody else who sees the situation in an entirely different way thinks you meant the opposite,” the rabbi explained.

“We need the ability to persevere, to keep talking in order to work through these issues,” she said, but the current social environment shuts down these skills, and so we end up in a cycle that Bauman calls myxophobia.

“We start off with a fear of the unknown … and it takes skill to deal with that: inner strength, communal support, faith in the future,” she explained. “When we don’t have those things, our fear of the unknown searches for a target. Oh, if only that unknown thing were known or, worse, if only that unknown thing were removed.”

Limiting immigration might make people safer for a period, for example. But, when there are fewer new people in a person’s life, anyone new will seem even more scary, she said, and a person’s epistemic courage, courage to learn, diminishes.

To stop the cycle, we must question propaganda, and become skilled in hearing what is uncomfortable, she said, pointing to a couple of tendencies that make this hard, including “the hasty generalization fallacy.” This is when we make broad conclusions from a small piece of information, like judging every Iranian based on how you feel about your uncle from Iran, who you don’t like.

Generalizations help us protect ourselves, Duhan Kaplan acknowledged, “but we also have to realistically ask: Is this a situation in which I need to protect myself? What is at stake here? If we are not talking our immediate protection, then we can think critically.”

Another hurdle, she said, is the “false dichotomy, false bifurcation, the either-or fallacy … claiming that there are only two options when in fact there are many more. Like the students trying to figure out how to pray. Should we pray for the well-being of Israelis? Or should we pray for the well-being of Palestinians? We can’t do both because that’s too complicated. How will we work out the words? Of course, if you’re training to be a clergy person, it is your job to work out the words, and those skills will come, even if they haven’t come right now.”

Duhan Kaplan also discussed the “bandwagon effect,” which she described as “the 53 million people can’t be wrong fallacy. Oh, yes, they can.”

She has adopted a principle: “If everyone agrees on something, I say, wait a minute, isn’t there also another way to look at this? And there’s a mythical teaching in our tradition about the Sanhedrin, ancient Jewish court, when a death penalty case came before this jury of 70 judges. If there is a unanimous guilty verdict, the person is freed, because there couldn’t possibly have been a unanimous verdict without groupthink. And, when people’s lives are at stake, we don’t want groupthink. We want something nuanced, something we can work together on.”

The rabbi talked about how to listen: “What is the inner work that we do? We quiet the mind. And, to quiet the mind, that takes courage, because you have to say to yourself, I trust that I’m going to be able to understand what I’m hearing…. I trust I’m going to be able to respond.”

Listening, feeling what another person is feeling, hearing what’s important to them, might engender strong reactions, she warned. “Conflict resolution work, courageous work, meeting difference, solving problems, doesn’t always feel good … you might not be happy with what you learn about other people, you might not be happy with what you learn about yourself…. And, of all the points that I made tonight, that’s the one I want people to most take to heart: there’s nothing wrong with you if the work is hard.”

One of Duhan Kaplan’s strategies in this time of heightened anxiety is to recite the 13 Attributes of Compassion.

“Where these come from is in the Bible, when Moses is at Mount Sinai, and he says to God, show me your face, and God says, you can’t see my face, but you can see my after-effects…. What is my true essence? This is what is revealed: God, the ineffable one, compassion, tenderness, patience, forbearance, kindness, awareness. I’m carrying love for thousands of years; lifting guilt, letting go of mistakes; allowing freedom and a fresh start.

“Not immediately,” she said. “Takes time. In fact, the Bible says it might take four generations for all these processes to work through, but, the point is, when I find myself angry and constricted, I will pause and I will recite this mantra.”

Another thing Duhan Kaplan does, when she needs it, is “the Examen, the examination of consciousness,” as taught by St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuit order.

“You find as quiet a space as you can find,” she said. “You allow yourself to become aware of divine presence, whatever that means to you…. And then you review the day with gratitude … you pay attention to your emotions … just notice. And then choose one thing that’s on your heart and mind and pray in the way that you pray…. And then, at the end, you look toward tomorrow and you say whatever it is has come out of your reflection.”

In the Jewish tradition, she said, Aaron “is the consummate peacemaker” and one of his lessons for us is that, if we do the work of peacemaking, “some kinds of peace will come.”

She circled back to Rabbi Tarfon: “we don’t have that much time, there’s so much to do.… It’s not up to you to finish the work … but you have to do something.”

Deceit, desire & the divine

In Seattle, hours after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, two FBI agents knock on Monty’s door, asking questions about his Afghan partner, who has seemingly disappeared. How much does Monty really know about Jamal? What does he know about himself?

Vancouver writer Gareth Sirotnik’s Endless Blind Passions (Capsicum Press, 2025) jumps right into the chaos and uncertainty that 9/11 sparked in the United States, and beyond. The novel centres on the character of Monty, a Jewish, gay man in his mid-50s, who thought he had finally settled into himself and his life, yet is forced to reevaluate that thought when the FBI arrive.

Alternating between the repeated visits of the FBI agents and the memories their inquiries trigger for Monty, we witness the fragility of Monty’s contentment and the tumultuous paths that he has chosen. He has lived fully, most would say, experimenting sexually, spiritually, politically and morally. He is a seeker and his soul-searching is a work in progress, despite his initial belief that he had found himself – and peace – once he’d met Jamal.

Endless Blind Passions is a thriller-meets-coming-of-age story, unusual perhaps in its seriousness, which sometimes gets in the way (as does dialogue that doesn’t always sound natural), but it’s entertaining. Most of us don’t really “find” ourselves as teenagers – Monty certainly didn’t – but are continually discovering aspects of ourselves. In our lives, we do things that make us proud, and things that carry shame or regret. Hopefully, we learn from our experiences and become a better person, but who is even to say what that means.

Sirotnik’s personal journey inspires Monty’s, that’s for sure. Sirotnik grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from college in Portland, moved to Canada in 1971 (Monty’s brother lives in Canada) and, most notably, is gay, Jewish and a longtime practitioner of Zen Buddhism.

As the novel’s title implies, Zen is a vital component of the story. Monty’s spiritual awakening occurs alongside drug-fueled encounters and unconventional relationships. He works (both consciously and subconsciously) to strip away social personas and confront his “true self.” He lives intensely, even hedonistically, but not necessarily deeply in the introspective sense, or even in knowing his various romantic partners. His ego prevents him from seeing the reality of situations, including the impact of his own actions on others throughout his life.

That’s all on a personal level. Paralleling Monty’s understanding of his “blind passions” is the realization that American society is not what it was, let’s say, sold as being. Sept. 11, 2001, marked a significant increase in racism, xenophobia, paranoia, government surveillance – it did not create them. In the novel, Jamal represents “the other” that became society’s “blind passion” after the attacks that day on the United States, but Monty’s past – though only going back 50ish years – highlights that the concept of “the other” has existed as long as humanity.

Ultimately, the novel posits that true spiritual awakening only happens when we acknowledge our “endless blind passions,” drop our masks and face reality as our true selves. It does this in an engaging way, with readers learning a lot along the way, while rooting for love to win out.

Reclaiming sacredness

“Everything changes when we are rooted in our sacredness,” writes Jeff Golden in his self-published, award-winning book Reclaiming the Sacred: Healing Our Relationships with Ourselves and the World (2022).

“When we can feel that we are an essential part of the universe, that we are the breath of the divine,” Golden believes that we can transform what he describes as our “morally, spiritually, ecologically, and, soon enough, economically” bankrupt system into “an entirely different way of living and being, rooted in the wonder, reverence, and connection that have long nourished our ancestors, yet unique to our times and needs and opportunities.”

Reclaiming the Sacred is a densely packed book, almost overflowing with facts and ideas (there are 38 pages of endnotes). Golden includes narratives, data, poems, blessings and philosophy from countless thinkers and doers. He repeats key themes – a necessary action given the amount of information he imparts. He has some punchy and creative, if long, chapter headings (“More Sleep, Less Cow: Physical Health and Happiness” and “Retail Therapy: Taking Our Insecurities and Fears to the Mall,” for example) and writes conversationally.

His thesis is that materialism not only can’t make us happy but prevents us from realizing our own inherent wealth, and that of the world, which we are destroying, along with many of its inhabitants. “Between 40 and 80% of all species may not survive to see the next century,” he writes. “We are one of those species.”

Golden argues against the idea that we come into the world alone and die alone; in fact, he contends that we are never alone, so intertwined we are with the world, its elements, its creatures, its plants, its particles. He sees “religion as the experience of profound belonging,” rather than as “a set of doctrines that must be believed and obeyed.” He hopes the book will support readers on their journey to reclaim themselves and the world as sacred.

Proceeds from the sale of Reclaiming the Sacred go to nonprofits doing work related to its themes. For more information about that and about the courses and workshops Golden teaches, go to reclaimingthesacred.net.

A healing Shabbaton

Or Shalom hosts Rabbi Tirzah Firestone for a Shabbaton in Vancouver June 12-13. (photo form tirzahfirestone.com)

A community Shabbaton featuring teacher, author and psychotherapist Rabbi Tirzah Firestone will take place June 12-13, offering participants the opportunity to explore ancestral healing, resilience and spiritual transformation through the lens of Jewish wisdom.

Drawing from the insights of her book Wounds into Wisdom, Firestone guides individuals and communities in transforming inherited pain into sources of strength, compassion and clarity. Through storytelling, guided meditation, embodied practice and real-life case studies from around the world, Shabbaton participants will engage in an experiential journey of healing across generations.

Jewish tradition has long recognized that we inherit not only the blessings of our ancestors, but also the residues of their unhealed wounds. While these inheritances can offer resilience and meaning, they can also shape us in ways that keep us reactive rather than reflective. This Shabbaton invites participants to approach these inheritances with awareness, tenderness and courage, transforming what has been carried unconsciously into wisdom and renewed possibility.

Over the course of the weekend, Firestone will explore what Viktor Frankl described as humanity’s “uniquely human potential to transform personal tragedy into triumph.” The Shabbaton will include a community dinner and Kabbalat Shabbat June 12, 6 p.m. (registration required); morning services with Firestone June 13, 10 a.m.; and a beachfront gathering focused on sacred stories and teachings June 13, 8 p.m. (registration required, after which location will be disclosed). To register and for more information, contact [email protected].

– Courtesy Or Shalom

Tarot as spiritual ritual

Alycia Fridkin holds the Wheel of Fortune tarot card, which features the Tetragrammaton of G-d’s name interspersed between the letters T, A, R, O. (photo from Alycia Fridkin)

I love tarot. I love how you can receive insight anywhere, anytime using only what G-d gave you and a deck of cards. It’s a perfect spiritual practice for Jews who have been wandering spiritually. Not everyone knows enough Hebrew to read our sacred texts, and not everyone feels connected through our traditional prayers or going to the synagogue. But many are yearning for deep connection. New ways of practising spirituality are needed.

Tarot has drawn me closer to Judaism, Jewish people, G-d and myself. I have come back to the cards repeatedly for guidance, with my Jewish self leading the way. I am on a journey towards loving the Torah again, and tarot is helping me get there.

For those who don’t know, tarot is a form of divination originating in Italy in the mid-15th century. It relies on using one’s intuition to channel wisdom from the divine, using a deck of cards with meaningful images, numerology and symbols. Although tarot is not traditionally used in Jewish contexts, using intuition as a spiritual practice is not new to Judaism. It goes back to our roots, which were pagan in nature. Our women ancestors played important roles in the times of the Temple, using their intuitive wisdom as priestesses and healers. Tarot invites us to return to our spiritual roots that were lost, and to search for meaning within our own bodies and spirits.

I use tarot every day to connect with G-d and to feel a sacred connection to my Jewish spiritual self. In my view, tarot is a spiritual tool, just like Torah, to help us connect with the divine. Reading tarot guides me in life. It feels sacred, and there is ritual around the reading. In both tarot and Torah reading, we create a sacred space, look at the same text over and over again in different ways, and draw on our own experience to arrive at new interpretations, applying the meaning to our lives in the here and now.

Without knowing anything about tarot, you can look at the original images created by Pamela Coleman-Smith on the traditional Rider-Waite Tarot deck and see the Jewish significance of the cards. When I saw the holy Tetragrammaton of G-d’s name inscribed on the chest of the angel in Temperance, one of the 22 Major Arcana cards, I felt the Jewish connection immediately. It is also a significant synergy that the scroll in the lap of the High Priestess reads “TORA,” letters which are also found on the Wheel of Fortune but rearranged to read TARO, interwoven with the four Hebrew letters of G-d’s name. In the Minor Arcana, the Ten of Pentacles contains 10 circles with five-pointed stars in the centre, depicted in shape of the 10 sefirot, the sacred geometry also known as the Tree of Life in kabbalah.

My curiosity with tarot began as a teenager. I somehow acquired a small deck but didn’t know how to read it. As an adult, the cards found their way to me again, and perhaps it was not a coincidence that I was gifted with a tarot deck just after I turned 40, the age that Judaism traditionally says we are spiritually mature enough for the mystical teachings of kabbalah.

I learned to read tarot through my own study, using books, podcasts and courses. Even though some talked about the kabbalist correspondences on the cards, I never learned how tarot could be used as a way of connecting with my Jewish spirituality.

Since then, I have been exploring tarot as a tool for Jewish spiritual practice in several ways. I read for myself, I read for others, and I use the cards for Jewish rituals, such as setting intentions when lighting candles for Shabbat.

I read tarot professionally under the name Azra Silverstein, a decision I made out of fear of the stigma associated with tarot. I chose the name because of its connection to my own Hebrew name, but also because of its Jewish feel. It makes a difference knowing when a reader is Jewish, and clients have often sought me out because of this.

I was reading at a spiritual fair once and a young man saw me listed as a Jewish tarot reader. He sat down at my table and asked me, “What makes a tarot reading Jewish?” I gave him the short answer, “You and me!” It’s because of the people who are involved. When you read tarot, you use your intuition, which means using the whole of yourself to glean insight from within and the world around you. So, if you are Jewish, you will read with a Jewish lens. It’s inherent.

The longer answer is, there are many ways to make a reading Jewish. One way is to open with a blessing. When I am reading for a Jewish client who has never had a reading before, I will often recite Shehechiyanu, the traditional blessing for doing something for the first time. In my opening meditation before a tarot reading I sometimes use the word Shechinah, instead of a more secular reference to the universe. I’ve witnessed Jewish clients drop into a sacred vibration when such references are made. I can feel the powerful impact of our ancestry in the reading ritual.

I also have done readings for Jewish people where I weave in Jewish concepts, make connections to Jewish holidays or take into account the broader context surrounding Jews today. Tarot readings can support people navigating antisemitism or conflicts related to being Jewish, and they can also provide guidance for one’s Jewish spiritual development.

If you are curious about how tarot can deepen your own spiritual practice, I invite you to pick up a deck and start reading for yourself. For those who want more formal training, you may be interested in my Jewish tarot course, which teaches how to read the cards using Jewish and secular methods, as well as how to use tarot for Jewish ritual. For Passover, I created a Haggadah (which is available online) that uses tarot to engage with various parts of the seder. For more information, please visit my website, azrasilverstein.com.

Dr. Alycia Fridkin, PhD, is also known as Azra Silverstein, the Jewitch Tarot Reader. Get in touch at azrasilverstein.com or email her at [email protected].

A journey beyond self

“The Valley of the Shadow” by Michal Tkachenko.

Songs of Deliverance, a solo exhibit by Michal Tkachenko, opened last month at the Zack Gallery and is on display until Nov. 10. While its title is inspired by the lyrics of a Bethel Music song – “You unravel me, with a melody / You surround me with a song / Of deliverance, from my enemies / Till all my fears are gone” – its focus derives from three psalms.

“I really wanted to have a subject for the exhibition that would bind communities together and so I came to rest on the psalms, which span both Judaism and Christianity, but are also used in secular society as a means to reach out to a greater being beyond ourselves,” Tkachenko told the Independent. “For me, this is a huge departure from previous work in both subject and vulnerability. It is my most honest work so far and, as the exhibition falls on the two-year anniversary of everything I saw with my spirit, I feel myself rising from the anguish and am ready to speak about my experience now, to move towards creating what I saw was possible.”

Lacking the exact words to describe it, Tkachenko said she had a near-death, or mystical, experience two years ago, and she was in that state for more than a week.

“It instantly changed my entire outlook on life and death and it completely changed me,” she said. “I was so excited about it until I began to realize how isolated it made me and how those I reached out to didn’t always have a helpful response. I quickly spiraled into the dark night of the soul and have been traveling that road…. Two very deep things came to rest in me during this time. The first was a deep longing in my spirit for something greater than myself, to draw and stay extremely close to God. The second was a deep grief that all that I had seen with my spirit, particularly an unseen solid force of love that is everywhere and how we are meant to love and be vulnerable with each other as our primary purpose in life, were things I could not make happen however hard I tried.”

Psalm 23 – “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” – was with Tkachenko throughout this two-year period. “For me,” she said, “it was a psalm about my journey and how, in the midst of the darkness, God was always with me and more vivid than I had ever experienced outside of that extraordinary week.”

photo - Michal Tkachenko’s solo exhibit, Songs of Deliverance, is at the Zack Gallery until Nov. 10 — Michal Tkachenko’s solo exhibit, Songs of Deliverance, is at the Zack Gallery until Nov. 10. *(photo by Andrea Lee)*

As she approached the one-year anniversary of that week, Tkachenko asked two people to write her a blessing, as she made a vow to God and shaved her head. “One of the blessings,” she said, “included Psalm 63 and it reflected my own deep longing for God, ‘I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry parched land where there is no water.’… My hair that I shaved off is part of the exhibition in an aged box that is meant to suggest a holy relic of the past, when people had more vivid experiences with God.

“Psalm 139 is such a beautiful expression of God’s love and absolutely full of beautiful imagery as an artist,” she continued. “It is a psalm that has also kept me company on my two-year journey and moves me every time I read it.

“For this psalm,” she said, “I made a pile of sketches of different verses and the images that came to me. Of those, I chose seven to do larger pieces on mylar. In many of the pieces, the spirit of God is represented by the white negative space. In ‘You Hem Me in Behind and Before, You Lay Your Hand Upon Me,’ the image of a human is abstracted in a long, dark column down the centre of the page, but the figure is not the focus. Instead, the white empty space is the representation of God hemming that figure in from ‘behind and before.’”

Songs of Deliverance marks Tkachenko’s return to drawing and painting after this two-year period, during which she spent a lot of time writing. “My goal is to make short, layered videos using these writings,” she said.

She also took a break from painting during COVID, making art out of dollhouses that people were getting rid of in the decluttering that took place then. In these dollhouses, she created COVID lockdown scenes in miniature.

“My interest is not held by one medium or one style alone, although I do have a style that often emerges naturally,” she said. “The older I get, the less interested I am in creating what I think others will like or want to buy and more about what I want to say and what I am excited about making and expressing through the medium that seems best suited to that particular message.”

Tkachenko was born in Victoria but grew up in Vancouver. Her dad, an architectural technician, builder and musician, was a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada after the Second World War, while her mom, a teacher, music teacher and musician, was a second-generation Canadian with a Scottish/British background.

“My parents were part of the hippy movement in the ’60s and ’70s and, when I was young, we lived in communal housing,” said Tkachenko, who is the oldest of four sisters.

“Growing up in a big creative household, there were always guests and cooking parties (Ukrainian food), live music and all sorts of art projects going on,” she said. “My parents didn’t push the academics as much because they wanted to make sure we found what gave us excitement and joy and they invested in building our self-esteem instead.”

That said, Tkachenko has a bachelor’s and a master’s in fine arts. For her schooling, she has lived in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, Florence and London (England). She has lived and volunteered in Haiti, Kenya, Malawi and Liberia, among other places. She has studios in both Vancouver and Manchester, as she, her husband and kids travel between Canada and the United Kingdom.

Despite knowing from a young age that she was going to be an artist, it took time for Tkachenko to recognize her skill and justify making art – “I considered it a luxury item, when the poor existed in the world,” she said.

“My hippy parents had driven us down to Mexico a number of times when my sister and I were young children (we are the oldest two) and we had been taken to the slums to understand how most of the world lived and how, despite our modest life in Canada, we were rich compared to rest of the world. It had made a huge and lasting impression on me as a child.”

At 18, she moved to Haiti to volunteer for a year, she said, “but before the year was out, I was in a life-altering car accident in which a friend died, my skull was shattered and my face smashed in on one side. I was flown back to Canada for reconstructive surgery and to recover.”

She volunteered for a spell in Kenya a few years later, but then finally decided to follow her calling in art.

Tkachenko works out of Parker Studios in Vancouver. She is also on the advisory committee for the DTES Small Arts Grant. “Being on this committee and working out of Carnegie [Community Centre] in the Downtown Eastside joins two things I value – the arts and working among the less fortunate,” she said.

Tkachenko’s husband is Jewish on his mother’s side – “her parents fled Czechoslovakia and Germany for the UK during WWII,” Tkachenko shared.

“Although they purposefully lost a lot of their Jewish heritage during the shift for safety reasons, my kids and I have become interested in it,” she said. “I came from a very open faith background because my parents were hippies that were part of the Jesus People Movement. They always encouraged us to find our own way to God and faith and, as a result, the people I am drawn to with my spirit are varied, from Jewish to Muslim, from Buddhist to Eastern Awakenings. The value of community does go beyond a single group [an idea she explores in one of The Journey series videos she is currently working on] and the more open and loving we become with each other, the more we can appreciate the differences that we each were gifted. And the more we see the bigger picture and what we all have in common.”

Sharing a personal journey

Son of a Seeker follows Kai Balin’s search for where he fits within Judaism and Jewish community. (still from Son of a Seeker)

Kai Balin’s documentary Son of a Seeker, which screened to a sold-out Rothstein Theatre last month, is an official selection of the 2026 Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which will take place next April.

The very personal work that follows Balin’s search for where he fits within Judaism and Jewish community will be thought-provoking for viewers, generating questions about what religion, family and belonging mean to them.

“I think my mother, sister and even my brother have a more innate sense of security in who they are and in who they are as Jews,” Balin told the Independent. “My dad and I, on the other hand, have a more complex identity. It makes it harder to fully ﬁt in or feel completely rooted. However, I see it – and I know my dad does too – as a kind of blessing. It’s ultimately who we are. And, while it comes with plenty of challenges, being a seeker is also a beautiful way to live.”

Balin dedicates the documentary to his grandparents, who survived the Holocaust. “But survival is not the same as security,” he narrates in the film. “My father and I have spent our lives trying to understand what it means to continue.”

Having grown up in a Jewish but not religious home, where his deeper questions were not answered, Balin’s father, Jeffrey, began looking for answers elsewhere, notably, in Buddhism. And, while Balin’s mother, Jennifer Shecter, grew up in a traditional Jewish family and attended Jewish school, “bringing a strong sense of Judaism into the home wasn’t a priority, but I knew I was a Jew,” says Kai Balin in the film. “And I got to create a version of Judaism that I owned and I loved.”

The home video clips in the film highlight this love. As a child, Balin plays at being a rabbi, wants to be one when he grows up. But, over the years, he loses this connection, just as his father begins to return to Judaism. How the father and son negotiate their respective paths, while being respectful of the other’s journey, is a key aspect of the documentary.

“When I ﬁrst started making Son of a Seeker, I had no idea what the title would be, or even what the story really was,” said Kai Balin. “I knew I wanted to explore Judaism and what it means to be Jewish, but I didn’t expect it to become so personal. Early on, I interviewed a few dozen Jewish people from across the spectrum on camera. But, in the end, I realized I wanted this ﬁlm to be something much more intimate.

“My dad initially thought he’d just be one of many voices in the ﬁlm. He didn’t expect to become such a central ﬁgure in the story. It pushed him far beyond his comfort zone, but he ultimately believed in the project and gave me his full blessing to be a part of my documentary.”

Balin’s sister, Justine, and brother, Jackson, are also in the film, his brother in the background, while his sister is featured more prominently.

“My sister was my right-hand woman throughout the entire process – I truly couldn’t have made this ﬁlm without her,” said Balin. “She ﬁlmed what’s arguably the most important scene in the movie, when I’m walking through the town where our grandfather was born and raised until he was sent away to a forced labour camp and had everything taken from him and his family. My sister also spent countless hours in the editing room, helping make the tough calls about what to cut and what to keep. Without her input, the ﬁlm would’ve easily been two hours long and a lot less focused.

“My whole family really stood behind me on this project,” he said. “They gave me the strength, courage and conﬁdence to see it through.”

Balin came to filmmaking somewhat organically.

“I was studying kinesiology at Western University. After my second year, I worked on an indie ﬁlm, Volition, as part of the swing crew, helping with lighting and grip. Later that summer, I was the program director at Camp Hatikvah (2017), where the videographer/photographer, Denis Lipman, brought some super cool gear…. Right before my third year, I bought a camera – and, from then on, I started dedicating less and less time to what I was actually studying, and more time learning how to shoot and edit.

“I was running a nonproﬁt at school that threw club and bar events for local charities, and the ﬁrst video I ever made was a recap of one of those nights,” said Balin. “I started getting more involved on campus and around the city (London, Ont.), looking for any chance to shoot videos.

“My ﬁrst paid gig was ﬁlming a club event that featured a guy in a robot suit on stilts. I was also on the rugby team, so I made a few hype-up videos for them whenever I was injured (which was quite a bit). Over the last two years at my time in university, I got more invested in videography and less focused on kinesiology. I ended up shooting videos for all sorts of events and student clubs.”

After graduating, Balin pursued videography full time. Not wanting to make corporate videos, he started making a documentary about his dad’s work.

“He was a leadership development coach working mostly with heads of NGOs and social enterprises,” explained Balin. “I lined up a plan to travel to different countries, mostly in East Africa and India, to ﬁlm these organizations and their leaders. I started shooting, but I didn’t have a clear direction. Eventually, I lost the passion for the project – and for ﬁlmmaking altogether. I just wanted to travel.”

It would be almost five years before Balin made another video.

“It took about three months to put My 5 Year Video Project together – I wasn’t working any other job at the time – and we held a small premiere in August 2024 with around 70 people,” he said about the film, which can be seen on YouTube.

“I didn’t expect people to be so moved by what I had created,” he said. “That experience gave me the conﬁdence to pursue my next ﬁlm project. At the time, it was just a rough idea, and I had no clue it would eventually become something so personal – and so deeply centred around my father’s story as well.”

But, for Balin, it’s the personal aspects of art, films and books that draw him in, “even if I can’t directly relate to what the creator is going through,” he said. “I remember hearing years ago, from a few directors I really respect, that you ultimately have to make the ﬁlm for yourself – something you’d enjoy watching a hundred times over, and something that excites you to work on every day.

“For me, that excitement comes from sharing something personal. It’s my life, my questions, my struggles, and I ﬁnd them interesting. So maybe others will too.”

As for what comes next, Balin said, “One side of me just wants to let the river ﬂow, follow life as it comes without getting too attached to any future outcomes. But the other side of me dreams of being a famous, successful ﬁlmmaker making big-budget movies. There’s still something in me that maybe wants to be a rabbi one day as well.”

He added, “I know my relationship with Judaism will continue to evolve, but, for now, I’ve found a sense of peace. I feel like I have a steady relationship with it, and I’m much more secure in who I am as a Jew than I was when I started this ﬁlm.

“These days,” Balin said, “I ﬁnd myself seeking something else: my soulmate. That might even be the focus of my next documentary – exploring the journey to ﬁnd ‘the one’ – if that concept even exists.”

Meet new director of JACS

In February, Jewish Addiction Community Services (JACS) appointed Rabbi Joshua Corber as its new director. The Vancouver-born Conservative rabbi spent the last 10 years as a congregational rabbi in Calgary, Vaughan, Ont., and Louisville, Ky., before returning home in July 2023.

“Practically the entire time I was serving congregations, I was in recovery,” Corber said. “Prior to that, I was in active addiction. I’m in a unique position to serve the Jewish community in this way because I have the personal experience of having suffered from addiction, but I also have experience from my congregational service with pastoral counseling and, in particular, people going through severe life trauma. That will be of immense value to me in serving this community.”

Rabbi Joshua Corber is the director of Jewish Addiction Community Services Vancouver. (photo from JACS)

Corber noted that the Jewish community faces an acute risk when it comes to substance abuse. One reason is the misconception that Jews are immune to addiction, but another is the prevalence of alcohol in traditional religious observance. “There’s no religion other than Judaism in which alcohol is so present in almost all aspects of religious life,” he said.

“Alcohol is prescribed, sanctioned and encouraged in Judaism, and not just on Purim,” he continued. “There’s always a Jewish excuse for a l’chaim. For me, as a rabbi, that posed a unique danger because I could always justify it. Though halachic authorities strongly discourage drunkenness, that message won’t be absorbed by the addict, who will make a beeline for the l’chaim table – every single time.”

Corber’s polysubstance addiction, including alcohol, became acute during the pandemic. He said the most concerning addictions, that pose the most immediate threat to life, are opioids and fentanyl.

But, just as Judaism presents a risk in terms of addiction, it also has resources for recovery, the rabbi noted.

“Most of the recovery world, such as 12-step programs and AA, consider an addiction to be a spiritual problem, and spiritual problems require spiritual solutions. I have a deep knowledge of the ways in which Jewish tradition and Jewish wisdom teachings can be leveraged as a critical aid in recovery.”

Corber’s first community event will be held on April 15. The Third Seder: Understanding Addiction and the Path to Freedom is a communal, seder-like meal where the rabbi will discuss the connection between addiction, recovery and spiritual freedom. “We’ll leverage and focus the Haggadah around addiction and recovery,” Corber said, adding that “everyone should come.”

“This is not just for people who are in recovery or struggling with addiction,” he said. “It’s really important that the whole community be involved in the conversation around addiction. It can’t be that shivas are the only place that we’re talking about addiction.”

For more information or to book a seat, visit jfsvancouver.ca/events.

New umbrella for JACS

When Jewish Addiction Community Service was established in 2016, its role was to help members of the community suffering from addiction. Eight years after its inception, in 2024, the organization came under the umbrella of Jewish Family Services, meaning that, operationally, it will be under the auspices of JFS.

“We needed infrastructure and clinical support, so this is a big operational shift that integrates addiction-related services with other services that JFS provides,” said Tanja Demajo, chief executive officer at JFS. “When a client comes to JFS or JACS for support, we examine their needs holistically and connect them with different resources based on their needs. Going forward, it means people can get the support they need in one place instead of going to two.”

Demajo and her team hope the new development will remove barriers to service access and eliminate the shame and discomfort associated with requests for support, because the need is certainly there, she said.

“The percentage of people impacted by addiction in the Jewish community is very similar to the wider community: we know that every third community member is impacted by someone affected by addiction. But there’s a lot of stigma and judgment, so it’s not easy to ask for help,” Demajo told the Independent. “Education and awareness are things JACS and JFS really need to work on, to normalize the need to ask for help. The more conversations we have, the more it normalizes the need for help.”

JACS has hired Corber as a full-time director, and is relying on eight therapists contracted through JFS. Demajo said, as community needs shift and change, the organization will examine taking on additional therapists if needed. “We’re at the early stage of building a full program and bringing new energy to it,” she explained.

Demajo added that she’s deeply grateful to Howard Harowitz, the founder and chair of JACS, who advocated for addiction services in the Jewish community for years.

JACS’s mission is to increase education and awareness, provide community direct service, and offer guidance and referrals. For more information, visit jacsvancouver.com.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.

A Purim-Ramadan oasis

Members of the local Jewish and Muslim communities who came together in the Downtown Eastside March 16 to commemorate Shushan Purim and Ramadan by giving out food to those in need. (photo from Rabbi Philip Bregman’s Facebook page)

On Sunday, March 16, on the corner of Main and Hastings, members of the local Jewish and Muslim communities converged for a joint commemoration of Shushan Purim (the day after Purim) and the holy month of Ramadan.

Both these sacred occasions call upon their observers to feed those who are food insecure, often through charity. Muslims refer to this as “zakah,” Jews describe it as “tzedakah.” Both words denote righteousness. United in this shared charge on that day, these two Abrahamic religious traditions met at ground zero of Greater Vancouver’s mental health, addiction and housing crisis to nourish some of the residents of the Downtown Eastside. This was assuredly a “righteous” act for all participants, inspiring renewed hope for our troubled world.

The gathering was mainly the initiative of Vancouver-Granville Member of Parliament Taleeb Noormohamed, a few religious leaders of the Vancouver Muslim community and rabbis Dan Moskovitz, Philip Bregman, Jonathan Infeld and Arik Labowitz. In a social media post describing the event, Rabbi Bregman wrote: “We may not be able to solve the world’s political issues but we can come together to deal with in a small way a local issue (feeding the hungry) that affects us all.”

It was my great honour to be a part of this group as an ordained cantor and member of the Vancouver Jewish community. My day job often places me at this street corner, serving a similar clientele. I work as a multifaith chaplain on Vancouver Coastal Health’s ACT (Assertive Community Treatment) teams, providing spiritual care to clients and staff as they navigate the existential angst, cumulative grief and moral distress that accompanies the city’s overdose crisis. Many days bring me to the same area to help provide spiritual comfort and solace through presence and song. The task often is daunting. (On the day that I wrote these words, our ACT team lost another longtime client to a preventable overdose death at the age of 29.) Standing alongside my Jewish siblings and Muslim cousins and handing out food that our respective communities had prepared and purchased brought a whole new level of hope.

I particularly needed the spiritual uplift that Sunday, which, like so many Sundays before, again witnessed my Jewish community’s impassioned rallies, calling for the release of all the remaining hostages – those alive and dead – who were taken to Gaza during the barbaric Oct. 7 pogrom that waged war against Israel’s right to exist.

I also needed the spiritual uplift that day because March 16 marked the date when 23-year-old American Jewish nonviolent human rights activist Rachel Corrie (April 10, 1979-March 16, 2003) was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she protested the demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza. This horrific anniversary led me to spend that early morning reflecting once again on how to reconcile my abiding love of Israel with my vehement disagreement with those Israeli and American governmental policies that have violated human rights, killed innocent children and civilians and threatened ethnic cleansing.

As if to emphasize the point, earlier that same morning, I had breakfast with a Jewish friend with whom I had engaged in a book club to discuss Peter Beinart’s latest treatise, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Another Conservative cantor I know well and respect recently challenged me to open myself to voices I would not otherwise have considered regarding world affairs. I took that charge to heart and decided to read Beinart’s latest work, which I would not have been likely to peruse previously. Like the death of Corrie, reflecting on this book over breakfast proved sobering, as I continue to realize the many blind spots in my own thinking over the years.

While my mind and spirit were still reeling from navigating these concurrent realities, the Purim-Ramadan event provided me with a palpable spiritual uplift, as I witnessed Jews and Muslims standing in unity side by side with wide smiles, handing out nourishment to those deprived of food.

The spiritual boost also came from meeting devout Muslims in their bountiful humanity.

There was Aroun, who shared with some Jewish attendees and I how members of his mosque (Al-Jamia Al-Masjid) often come downtown to provide food to the poor on Ramadan. Aroun had us all in stitches when he jokingly indicated how hard it was to handle so many edibles while observing Ramadan’s required daytime fasting. In the same breath, he reminded us that though there are indeed extremists on both sides of the aisle, events like the present one proved that we do not have to toe their party line.

I likewise will never forget talking with another Muslim participant, Mohammed Zaid, to whom I explained the traditional duties of a cantor as a chanter of prayer. Mohammed responded by offering to demonstrate his own chanting of Quranic verses in Arabic, one of five languages that he speaks. I listened to his mellifluous voice echo the similar Middle Eastern musical modes that I employ when leading synagogue services. In his prayer, I heard words such as “Rahman,” an Arabic cognate for the Hebrew “Rachaman,” meaning Merciful One, and, of course “salaam,” which I knew as “shalom.” His singing reminded me of my late friend Imam Sohaib Sultan, z”l, who was a fellow classmate in my first chaplaincy training class years ago, and with whom I traded our traditions’ sacred melodies.

Our spirits were raised even during the traditionally dreaded cleanup time, as we together refolded the tables we had brought, and shlepped them into vans. My friend Ben Lubinizki and I shot the breeze with young Muslim men while we waited to gain access to the trash and recycling room. At that moment, I felt inspired to pull out my recent Purim costume’s toque, on which was boldly sprawled the phrase: “Canada is not for sale.” In response to this gesture, my Muslim cousins laughed and cheered me on in solidarity. Here was another front on which we were united.

As we said our chag sameachs, Ramadan mubaraks and salaam/shaloms, I realized that a key to interfaith dialogue – even on the most fraught issues – can occur through shared life-affirming experiences such as this one.

The memory of that Sunday morning gathering gives me hope that our mutual striving for lovingkindness can overcome all else. As Rabbi Moskovitz reflected on the occasion, two divided communities had aligned “to feed the hungry and also to collaboratively feed our soul’s hunger for shared humanity.”

May we never forget these universal lessons for our time, lessons brought to us from a very real temporary oasis, built on the most infamous intersection in the poorest postal code in Canada. If humanity can achieve this here, of all places, we can do so in Israel, Gaza and the world.

Cantor Michael Zoosman is a board-certified chaplain with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care. He serves as a spiritual health practitioner for the Assertive Community Treatment teams of Vancouver Coastal Health, working with individuals in the community living with severe mental health disorders and addiction. He sits as an advisory committee member at Death Penalty Action and is the co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. He served as cantor of Congregation Beth Israel 2008-2012.

Opening gates of kabbalah

Rabbi Matthew Ponak recently released his latest book, Embodied Kabbalah: Jewish Mysticism for All People. (photo by Marilyn Wolovick)

Rabbi Matthew Ponak introduced his new book, Embodied Kabbalah: Jewish Mysticism for All People, this month both in a Zoom event and in-person at the Victoria Jewish Community Centre.

According to the book’s description, the objective of Jewish mysticism is to “touch infinity with your feet planted in everyday, ordinary reality.” The book contains universal teachings that Ponak believes are necessary to the world at this time.

Delving into a millennium of Jewish writings, Ponak hopes his approach will serve as a counterweight to the focus in modern spirituality on bliss and transcendence. Throughout the centuries, Ponak argues, Judaism – including Jewish mysticism – has held “being a good person” as the ideal.

Embodied Kabbalah, written in the talmudic style, in which commentary surrounds the original texts, looks to the mystic teachings for finding a healthy balance between one’s spiritual life and external commitments to family, work and community. Many of the book’s sources have been translated into English for the first time.

During the launch at the Victoria JCC, Ponak spoke of the personal journey that led to the creation of the book. In his initial studies, he observed two different paths. “One was a path of transcendence,” he said, “a path of bliss, that all is well in the world and we should be celebrating all day. On one level that appealed to me, but I felt there was something missing in it.”

The other path, he said, is one of transformation. “This is one of deep self-knowledge: that I could get to know who I was inside, and new parts of me would start to come forward. There is a deep, radical honesty that can liberate parts of who we are. Those parts can enter into our outer lives as we become more whole.”

Upon further exploration, he discovered there was a way to incorporate both paths into one’s life.

“I found a particular teaching that says there is a time to transform – the work week – and a time to rejoice – Shabbat. One day a week, it is time to celebrate all that we have and focus on the positive, to not get weighed down by the negativity,” Ponak said. “There is a time for the deep personal transformation of working on ourselves, the spiritual work week. On Shabbat, however, everything is whole and we are, too. We feed ourselves delicious food and take an extra nap to help our bodies know the world is complete.”

Ponak emphasized that it is not necessary to choose between the paths of rejoicing and of transformation. There is a time for working and a time for celebrating. If all one has is work, then there is the risk of missing out on the beauty of life, he said. Alternatively, if one is in a prolonged state of transcendent joy, then a spiritual leader, for example, might become unable to help others grow because they have “left the world, so to speak, unable to relate to people.”

He said, “It is good to come off the mountain. It took me a long time to understand the value of that. If I had a trauma or a difficulty in my earlier years as a seeker, it was with the bliss. The transformation stuff was hard, but I was able to get it once it was taught to me in an accessible way.”

Ponak retraced various aspects of his spiritual journey. He studied transpersonal psychology (or spiritual psychology) and other religions. Through this, he found he could be both a spiritual person and grounded. “But there was a deeper part of me that knew there was something else,” he said. “There must be something in Judaism.”

After several years of study at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, he was able to decode the texts on his own. He discovered the hidden treasure of grounded Jewish spirituality that had been there all along in lesser-known mystical writings.

“If I had access to Embodied Kabbalah as a teenager, it could have saved me a lot of headaches and heartaches, to say nothing of my family’s stress,” he said. “This is why this book is so close to my heart.”

Among those who would benefit from the book, Ponak pointed to those interested in Jewish mysticism, those who have Jewish ancestry but feel alienated from Judaism, and those who want to learn about universal Jewish teachings as part of the global spiritual landscape.

Yet, for him, “the call to action that feels most urgent is to help people who are ‘ungrounded,’ who are finding mystical writings or going to spiritual retreats but are not connected to the earth: to the body or to their emotions. It’s time to open up the gates of Jewish wisdom to all who can benefit from it,” he said. “I hope this effort will help spiritual seekers to be responsible, relatable, whole and healthy – along with spiritually connected – so that we can be of our greatest service to humanity.”

For more information or to order the book, visit matthewponak.com.

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