travel

New draw to Ben-Gurion site

In 2023, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev opened a new home in Sde Boker for the David Ben-Gurion archives. (photo from Ben-Gurion University)

For visitors to Israel – and for Israelis looking for an engaging getaway – there is a relatively new destination in the country’s south.

In 2023, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev opened a new home for the David Ben-Gurion archives, with a dramatic exhibition hall to attract visitors. In addition to the many artifacts and documents on display, the exhibitions include interactive activities that allow visitors to speculate how the first prime minister would have responded to various scenarios.

Ben-Gurion was Israel’s first prime minister and the dominant political figure for the country’s first decade-and-a-half, during which time he served concurrently as minister of defence. In addition, no individual is more associated than Ben-Gurion with Israel’s development of the Negev and the entire south of the country.

The new archives facility rounds out a network of Ben-Gurion-related sites in the Sde Boker area, where Ben-Gurion built a desert home and enjoyed his retirement.

David Berson, Ben-Gurion University Canada’s executive director for British Columbia and Alberta, says the facility makes Sde Boker even more of a must-see for visitors to Israel.

There had been an archive at the Sde Boker campus, allowing deep research into Ben-Gurion’s papers and other materials, but these were photocopies because the university did not have the archival capacity to accommodate the originals in the environment they required. The originals were held in Tel Aviv at an Israel Defence Forces archive.

“Everything was there, but it was a reasonable facsimile, as we like to say,” said Berson.

That changed with the opening two years ago of the purpose-built Ben-Gurion Heritage Archive, which includes a 280-square-metre (more than 10,000-square-foot) exhibition hall.

“All the real, genuine archives have been transferred there,” Berson said. “The exhibition hall is basically an interactive tale of David Ben-Gurion’s heritage and questions about things like the ultra-Orthodox serving in the army, his relationship to the diaspora, the Altalena affair, all sorts of different things, as well as his correspondence with Hebrew school students from all over the world, leaders, his perspectives on religion, etc., etc.”

The facility is a partnership between BGU and the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute, an educational and commemorative organization committed to keeping Ben-Gurion’s ideals alive, especially his emphasis on developing the Negev. Among other things, they operate the museum at Ben-Gurion’s kibbutz home and other educational programming.

The Ben-Gurion Promenade, a project designed to honour his legacy and connect significant landmarks associated with his life, takes visitors on a 3.5-kilometre walk from his residence at Kibbutz Sde Boker to his burial site overlooking Nahal Zin, and taking in the new archives and exhibition hall. The accessible path is lined with native desert plants and interpretive signs about Ben-Gurion’s life and vision.

photo - The David Ben-Gurion archives includes a 280-square-metre exhibition hall — The David Ben-Gurion archives includes a 280-square-metre exhibition hall. *(photo from Ben-Gurion University)*

The archives are part of a larger complex that also houses the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, and the Azrieli Centre for Israel Studies.

Ben-Gurion’s eponymous university has three campuses in the country’s south.

The main Marcus Family Campus, in Beersheva, is home to the university’s faculties of engineering and sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences, business and management, computer science and cybersecurity, among others, and several advanced research institutes. It is adjacent to the Soroka University Medical Centre, where BGU medical students train. The campus is also home to the 10-year-old Advanced Technology Park, which is a joint venture of BGU, the City of Beersheva and real estate development company Gav Yam. The park is part of a national effort to develop the Negev region into a global centre for cybersecurity, defence technologies and tech innovation.

At the Sde Boker campus, about 30 kilometres to the south of Beersheva, specialties include desert studies, environmental science, hydrology, solar energy, sustainability and climate research, and arid agriculture. It is also home to the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research.

The Eilat campus, at the country’s southern-most tip, on the Red Sea, specializes in marine biology and biotechnology, hospitality and tourism management, regional development studies, and interdisciplinary undergraduate programs that allow students from the south to do their initial studies in the area before completing their degrees at the Beersheva campus or elsewhere.

Sde Boker has always been a sort of pilgrimage site for Ben-Gurion fans and history buffs. But, because tourism to Israel has plummeted in the past year-and-a-half, most of the visitors so far have been comparative locals, Berson said, including leaders of the security services and military, educators and other Israelis.

When tourism picks up, Berson hopes the archives will make Sde Boker even more of a destination on the visitors’ map.

“It’s a wonderful national treasure,” said Berson. “But it’s also something that’s not on people’s radar screens abroad. We really want to encourage people to come and visit there, put it on their itineraries.”

אייר קנדה חוזרת לטוס לישראל בחודש מאי הקרוב

חברת התעופה הלאומית של קנדה, אייר קנדה, תחזור לטוס לישראל במהלך חודש מאי הקרוב. זאת, בכפוף למצב הביטחוני שישרור באזור הנחשב לאחד המסוכנים העולם. ואם המלחמה תסתיים סוף סוף ולא צפויים משברים נוספים קרובים

במקור הייתה אמורה אייר קנדה לחזור לטוס לישראל במהלך חודש אפריל, אך כאמור לסוף הוחלט בחברה הקנדית לדחות את הטיסות לתל אביב בחודש ימים. כך מסבירה מנכ”ל אייר קנדה בישראל, רות בן צור. היא הוסיפה: “יש לנו ביטחון מלא בקו, ברגע שיכולנו לחזור זה הדבר הראשון שעשינו”

אייר קנדה הפסיקה לחלוטין לטוס לישראל לאור המשבר הביטחוני הקשה במזרח התיכון, המלחמה בעזה והמלחמה בלבנון, במהלך חודש אפריל שנה שעברה. אז אמרו בחברה הקנדית כי: “הפעילות של אייר קנדה לתל אביב וממנה תישאר מושעית לעתיד הנראה לעין, לאחר מעקב אחר ההתפתחויות באזור. אנו מתחייבים לחדש את הטיסות לישראל וממנה ונעשה זאת ברגע שזה יהיה בטוח עבור לקוחותינו והצוותים שלנו”

כאמור במהלך חודש מאי הקרוב, אייר קנדה צפויה לחדש את הטיסות מטורונטו ומונטריאול לתל אביב. יצויין כי כיום אין טיסות ישירות מקנדה לישראל, לאחר שחברת התעופה הלאומית של ישראל אל על, הפתיעה בהודעתה כי החל מחודש אוקטובר שנה שעברה, היא ביטלה את הטיסות הישירות לטורונטו ומונטריאול. וזאת, מחוסר כידאיות כלכלית בזמן שעדיף היה להסיט את המטוסים לקווים רווחים יותר. בקהילות של הישראלים והיהודים באזורי טורונטו ומונטריאול קיבלו את הפסקת הטיסות הישירות של אל על מישראל לקנדה ובחזרה, בתדהמה ובכעס רב

בשנת אלפיים עשרים ושלוש הטיסה אייר קנדה כמאה ותשעים אלף נוסעים בקווים בין טורונטו ומונטריאול לתל אביב. שנה קודם לכן מספר הנוסעים בקווים אלה עמד על כמאה שבעים וחמישה אלף

במקביל הודיעה לאחרונה אייר קנדה כי היא מוסיפה קו חדש בין קנדה לפורטוגל, שיכלול טיסות בין מונטריאול לפורטו. הטיסות שיחלו בארבעה בחודש יוני, במשך ארבעה ימים בשבוע, ימשכו כל הקייץ ועד סוף חודש ספטמבר. באייר קנדה מאמינים שקוו חדש זה יהיה רווחי במהלך הקיץ של שנה זו. יצויין כי לאייר קנדה יש טיסות קבועות בין טורונטו לבירת פורטוגל – ליסבון, וכן בין מונטריאול לליסבון. קווים אלה הוכיחו את עצמם בשנה שעברה ולכן התווסף גם קו לפורטו

באייר קנדה קיימת אופטימיות בנוגע לטיסות לשווקים שונים באירופה כולל פורטוגל, תוך הוספת קווים חדשים והגדלת הקיבולת בקווים קיימים של החברה הקנדית. בנוסף לקו לפורטו אייר קנדה מתכננת להוסיף קווים חדשים גם לאיטליה וצ’כיה, בהם בין טורונטו לנאפולי, ובין טורונטו לפראג. מדובר בשלוש טיסות שבועיות שיחלו במהלך חודש מאי

לעומת זאת באייר קנדה נערכים לקיצוץ בטיסות שבין קנדה לארה”ב לאור מלחמת הסחר נגד קנדה עליה הכריז נשיא ארה”ב דונלד טראמפ. לא מעט קנדים התבטאו לאחרונה על רצונם להחרים את ארה”ב ובמסגרת זו, לא לרכוש עוד מוצרים אמריקאיים ולא לטוס לארה”ב

לאור הירידה המסתמנת בביקוש לטיסות בין קנדה לארה”ב, באייר קנדה נערכים לקצץ במספר הטיסות בין שתי המדינות השכנות. בין הקווים שעשויים להיפגע – באם הביקוש לטיסות לארה”ב יקטן – הם לאזורים “חמים” המיועדים לבילויים כמו פלורידה, לאס וגאס ואריזונה

בסקר אחרון שנערך הודיעו כחמישים ושישה אחוז מהקנדים כי הם מוכנים לבטל את הטיסות שלהם לארה”ב, או להימנע מלטוס לארה”ב. באם טראמפ יחריף בסנקציות נגד קנדה, אחוז הקנדים שיסרבו לטוס לארה”ב צפוי לגדול משמעותית

Resilience of Portugal’s Jews

King Manuel I of Portugal (1495-1521) had a problem. To marry Princess Isabella of Spain, he consented to the request of her parents – Ferdinand and Isabella – to rid Portugal of its Jews. But Manuel wanted to keep the Jewish citizens close by, for their economic benefits (money and skills). His solution? In 1496-7, he forced Jews to convert. (He also expelled the country’s Muslims.)

Manuel believed that New Christians – this population is likewise referred to as conversos, anusim or Crypto-Jews; marranos is a derogatory term that should not be used – would continue to boost the country’s economy. It should be noted that Jews in Portugal already paid a special poll tax and a special property tax.

Even after they were forcibly converted, Portuguese Jews could not live wherever they wanted. They lived in separate quarters referred to as judiarias, what we might call ghettos. They worked as artisans and rural labourers, weavers, tailors, cobblers, carpenters, leather tanners, jewelers, and every branch of the metal industry, ranging from ordinary blacksmiths to armourers and goldsmiths.

Several Jews nonetheless reached prominence in medieval Portugal. Among them was Abraham Zacuto, originally from Spain. Portuguese King John II invited Zacuto to be the royal astronomer. The king wanted Zacuto to chart a sea route to India. Unlike most of his fellow religionists, Zacuto managed to flee Portugal after King Manuel imposed conversion on the country’s Jews.

There was also Isaac Abarbanel, who was King Afonso V’s treasurer. Yehuda Even Maneer was the richest Jew in the kingdom and, for that reason, was appointed Portugal’s finance minister. Master Nacim, a Jewish eye doctor, was accorded certain privileges because of his professional skills.

Before King Manuel decreed the forced conversion, the Jewish community of Tomar built a synagogue, in spite of attacks orchestrated against them and other Jews in the country. Unfortunately, the building was used for its original purpose for only a short period, after which – for years and years after the forced conversion – it was used by the Church. The town itself became one of the sites of the Inquisition tribunal. Today, the synagogue has been renovated and is considered a national monument.

Crypto-Jews continued to covertly practise Judaism. In the town of Porto, for example, the Crypto-Jews secretly operated a synagogue, hiding it from the Inquisition.

photo - In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up a Torah ark, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour — In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up a Torah ark, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up an amazing find. Hidden behind the eastern wall of the dining room was a Torah ark, or aron kodesh, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour. There were two compartments, a square space topped by a slightly larger arched tablet-shaped opening, with space for approximately six small Torah scrolls. Besides this relatively recent discovery, we have the 16th-century testimony of Immanuel Aboab, a native of Porto. (The late Yom Tov Assis, who was a professor at Hebrew University, had likewise been trying to locate where such an aron kodesh was located in the area.)

It was common among Crypto-Jews to light one Shabbat candle in a secret cabinet. There was also an emergency tool for snuffing out Shabbat lights if it was suspected that a Christian neighbour was spying. To make Shabbat different from other days, these secret Jews ate no meat. Purim was marked by three days of fasting beforehand. Passover was celebrated two days late, so as to throw Christians off the track. Other secret Jews took the risk of undergoing circumcision.

Within limits, these Crypto-Jews read psalms and recited the Shema, didn’t work on Shabbat, didn’t eat pork and fasted on Yom Kippur. Manuel (Abraham) de Morales passed out manuscripts of what he thought were important points to know about Judaism. But most of the Jewish customs were orally transmitted from mother to children.

Not surprisingly, the period before the forced conversion was not totally free of tension between Jews and Christians: Franciscan and Dominican clergy walked through judiarias, ready to convert Jews. Moreover, Portugal’s new merchant class was apprehensive about the influence of the Jewish citizens and their capital. Under the reign of João I (1385-1443), new laws obliged Jews to wear an identifying sign on their clothes and imposed curfews on the judiarias. There were scattered outbreaks of violence, like the attack on the Lisbon judiaria in 1445, in which many died.

photo - Jew Street in Lisbon, Portugal — Jew Street in Lisbon, Portugal. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

After the forced conversion, New Christians would be charged with being infidels, not heretics. These New Christians generally adopted Christian given names and Old Christian surnames. They probably did this to deflect attention. But harder times still followed for Portuguese Jews, with the massacre of 2,000 conversos in Lisbon in 1506 and the Portuguese Inquisition, which began in 1536. Inquisitors would come to a town and tell the gentile population that they were looking for secret Jews. They would present a list of suspicious behaviour to look for.

In medieval Portugal, turning in New Christians became a profitable venture. Arrested conversos had their assets seized by members of the Inquisition. Occasionally, Church officials would accept bribes for temporary pardons.

Apparently, if a New Christian approached an inquisitor, he had a chance of redeeming himself by admitting that his family lit Shabbat candles or washed sheets for Shabbat. On the other hand, if an Old Christian accused a New Christian of still practising Jewish rituals and the latter denied the observances, he would face a worse outcome from his trial.

The number of Inquisition victims between 1540 and 1765 is estimated at 40,000. Punishment included being raised by a pulley with one’s hands behind one’s back. Convicted infidels were then burned at the stake.

Cells where Crypto-Jews were held before their Portuguese Inquisition trials. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

The cruel punishments passed down by the Portuguese Inquisition drew large crowds of spectators. The crowds were akin to those who would come to watch bullfights.

Trials ceased after about 250 years, although Portugal’s Inquisition was not officially abolished until 1821.

Jewish informers should also be mentioned. These people, as can be imagined, found an open ear among Portugal’s prejudiced secular and religious leaders. If these traitors were discovered by the Jewish community, they might have had their eyes gouged out, their tongue removed or been put to death for putting the community at tremendous risk. So serious a crime was acting against one’s own people that even Maimonides condoned Jewish informers.

The impact of the forced conversion and the Inquisition continue to be felt. Take, for example, Belmonte, located in the northern part of Portugal. It has a small Jewish community that has retained the rituals of Judaism despite all the hardships and persecution. In the 1990s, when the idea of building a synagogue was raised, some Jewish community members were against it. Why? Because being a member of the anusim community was their cherished identity. Almost 200 years after the Portuguese Inquisition had been abolished, they couldn’t imagine living openly as Jews.

Estimates are that at least 20% of Portugal’s current population has anusim roots.

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

Virtuoso musician, impresario

The reasons why Wendy Atkinson, who owns Ronsdale Press, wanted to publish Have Bassoon Will Travel: Memoir of an Adventurous Life in Music by the late George Zukerman, are the reasons people should read it. Zukerman had a long and impressive solo career as a bassoonist, was a pioneer in organizing concerts and tours, and gave remote communities across Canada the rare chance to hear classical music performed live.

“She recognized that his anecdotes capture a vital period in Canada’s musical history and are vivid reminders of the lengths musicians will go to tour our vast country,” reads the afterword. “George’s memoirs go beyond simply capturing a life. He expanded the cultural reach of classical music in Canada; no small feat and Canada is better for it.”

How Zukerman’s memoir came to be is an example of the communities he created in his life. When he died Feb. 1, 2023, in White Rock, the manuscript had been written, but it took several volunteers – each with their own connections – to bring it to publication quality and get it printed. After reading Have Bassoon Will Travel, you will know why they did it. Not only was Zukerman a world-class musician and impresario, but he was a world-class human being: humble, funny, innovative, hardworking, fairness-driven, adventuresome, the list goes on.

Zukerman was born in London, England, on Feb. 22, 1927. Well into the book he talks about how he never liked his name, George – his parents, both American citizens living abroad, named him after the United States’ first president, George Washington. His middle name, Benedict, was in honour of 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, who was expelled by his community for his ideas. Zukerman also discusses his surname, the spelling of which differs across family thanks to the North American melting pot. There is something to be said about living up to one’s name, and Zukerman certainly was a leader in his fields of music, both as performer and impresario; he certainly forged his own path, uplifting the place of the bassoon in the orchestral world, creating opportunities for fellow musicians to perform and bringing classical music to the remotest of areas; and he lived in several places and traveled, mostly for work, around the world.

It is incredible how much of life is directed by (seeming) happenstance. Zukerman’s first encounter with the bassoon was at 11-and-a-half years of age. It was an accidental meeting, as his older brother showed him around the London prep school Zukerman was about to attend.

“We wandered past the windows of a basement chapel and glanced down to where an orchestra was rehearsing,” writes Zukerman. “A row of tall pipes seemed to reach for the ceiling. I could see and hear very little through the moss-covered stone walls and grimy opaque windows of the old school, and I wondered what on earth these strange-looking instruments were. My brother, already in Form IV, authority on much, including most musical matters, declared them to be bassoons, and the piece in rehearsal the annual Messiah. We walked on to explore my new school, and any awareness that I would spend my life playing that instrument would have been uncannily prescient. The bassoon remained buried deep among early memories.”

His next encounter was as random. As the Second World War began, the family – less Zukerman’s journalist father, who joined later – left London for New York City. There, Zukerman attended the newly established High School of Music and Art.

“By way of an audition,” he shares, “I played [on the piano] my one and only party piece (a simple Beethoven sonatina). To my surprise as much as anyone else’s, I was admitted to the class of 1940! Dare I suspect that my acceptance had as much to do with short pants and an English accent as with any evident musical skill?”

On the first day of school, the kids were told to pick an instrument. “No British prep school could have readied me for such democratic and independent action, so I hesitated,” writes Zukerman. “On all sides of me, the pushy American kids ran furiously and grasped what they could most easily identify. The violins, clarinets, flutes, trumpets, cellos and drums disappeared into groping hands. When I finally reached the shelf, all that remained was an anonymous black box. I lifted it gently and carried it toward a teacher standing nearby. ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ I asked timidly, ‘but what is this?’

“He looked down, and a broad smile covered his face. ‘Why, you are our bassoonist!’ he declared.”

With faint remembrance of the tour with his brother, he thought, “Was I now going to play such an instrument?”

Indeed, he was, and to eventual great acclaim, both as part of orchestras and as a soloist. But, as you can imagine, bassoonist was not exactly a living-wage career, at least not in Zukerman’s time, and his parallel career arose from a need for more work. Having learned during his time with the St. Louis Sinfonietta in the 1940s about community concerts – where money was raised in advance through subscriptions rather than individual ticket sales, and no contracts were signed until the money to pay for everything had been raised – Zukerman, who was by then living in Vancouver, brought the idea to Canada. His offer to an American company to be their representative here declined, Zukerman decided to do it on his own.

“Canada was coming of age, and Canadian communities were ready to make their own concert plans and to welcome Canadian groups and soloists, even if at the time they were equally unknown,” he writes. “Within a decade, Maclean’s magazine would write that I had successfully outsmarted the Americans at their own game.”

It is fascinating to read of Zukerman’s efforts to expand the reach of classical music in Canada and other countries – he visited the Soviet Union eight times between 1971 and 1992, as performer and concert organizer, and brought Soviet musicians to Canada to tour. Decades earlier, he spent a year-plus in Israel, part of the nascent Israel Philharmonic. He was also part of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in its early days, and of the Vancouver Jewish community – Abe Arnold, publisher of the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin, had a small but notable impact on Zukerman’s life.

Have Bassoon Will Travel is a truly engaging read. The way in which Zukerman writes is like how he would have spoken, though likely more concise and organized. The effect is that we the reader are having a chat with him, reminiscing. We get a feel for what life was like back in the day for a musician and entrepreneur. We feel nostalgia for a time many of us never experienced personally.

Unique heritage trip to China

Len, Jeffrey, Sharon and Valerie on their family trip to China in 2009. (photo from Valerie [Chan] Hum)

Little did we realize when our son, Jeffrey, married Sharon Szmuilowicz in August 2008 that we would find ourselves visiting China nine months later as a family and visiting all our ancestral homes.

My family comes from the village of Sui Nam, Toi San district, Guangdong province. My grandfather was sponsored by a tailor and moved to Victoria in 1893 as a 16-year-old from a very poor family. He eventually married, started a restaurant business (the Panama Café) and fathered 12 children. Today, more than 140 Chan family members have been born in Canada over five generations and 131 years.

My husband Len’s family was from a small village of 30 houses in Chongkou, Kaiping district, Guangdong province. Len’s father traveled back and forth between China and New Westminster to earn money to support his family. In 1950, Len and his grandmother left China for Vancouver and then met up with Len’s father, who had moved to Ottawa. Two years later, the rest of Len’s family arrived in Canada. The family owned a number of restaurants over the years.

When our son married a Jewish woman from Toronto, we never thought we would learn that her family has ties to China as well.

The idea for the trip to China was initiated by Sharon. She felt it was important to learn about Jeffrey’s culture and family history. However, since the Szmuilowicz clan also had a direct link to China via Shanghai, it was an opportunity to explore both their histories.

On May 13, 2009, 62 years after Sharon’s family left China, our tour guide Hao brought us to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, the former Ohel Moishe Synagogue, at Sharon’s request, where we were able to access a computer database listing all the refugees who had lived in Shanghai. We were so pleased to see Sharon’s grandfather and great-grandfather listed in the database, including their former address. Jacob and Samuel Szmuilowicz, age 59 and 21, were listed as Polish refugees living at 30-50 Zangyang Rd. What a tremendous discovery! And, to top it off, 30-50 was next door to the synagogue and was still standing.

photo - Valerie and Sharon outside the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, the former Ohel Moishe Synagogue — Valerie and Sharon outside the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, the former Ohel Moishe Synagogue. *(photo from Valerie [Chan] Hum)*

We decided to knock on their door and see if anyone remembered Sharon’s family. The present residents moved into the building in 1950 and had no recollection of the previous Jewish residents who had crammed into these small apartments more than 70 years ago. Although we could not find anyone who knew Sharon’s family, it was still a remarkable discovery to find the records and the home they had lived in.

For the purposes of our trip, Sharon’s story begins with her grandfather, Samuel. To escape conscription into the Russian army, Samuel and his father, Jacob, left their homes, by foot, in 1939, making their way to Japan via Manchuria. At the time, Samuel was at university in Vilna (now Lithuania; then under Polish occupation), studying mathematics, and Jacob was running a general store in Lida, then in Lithuania (now in Belarus).

Their transit visas were issued by Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara. He was giving out these visas without the knowledge of his government. It was dangerous for him to do so, but he knew that he needed to do something to save as many Jews as possible. In 1985, Sugihara was the first and only Japanese citizen to be listed by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.

With visas in hand, the journey took nearly two years to complete. They traveled by day and hid at night, finally arriving in 1941. In January 1942, they were transferred to Shanghai, where they joined the approximately 20,000 Jews who had migrated there in three waves beginning in the 1800s.

During their five years in Shanghai, Jacob sold rice while Samuel, who was attending the American School and learning English, ended up driving jeeps for the American army. They made enough money to leave for Mexico City in 1947, where they ran a textile factory that manufactured cotton goods, and started the Spanish-speaking arm of the Szmuilowicz clan. Sharon’s parents met in Mexico and moved to Canada, so her dad could pursue a career in medicine.

We learned that there were many Jews who fled Eastern Europe and ended up in Hong Kong or China.

The next part of our discovery trip found us traveling by ferry from Hong Kong over to the mainland city of Zha Hai, where we were then met by distant Hum clan relatives, who drove us to my paternal grandfather Chan’s hometown of Sui Nam. I suspect I am the only descendant who has made the trek back to the town of Sui Nam, which appears very old and somewhat decayed, but still standing.

photo - In the village of Lohk Hing Leih, 90-year-old Mrs. Tam remembered Len, who used to play with her eldest son — In the village of Lohk Hing Leih, 90-year-old Mrs. Tam remembered Len, who used to play with her eldest son. *(photo from Valerie [Chan] Hum)*

Half an hour later, we arrived in the small village of Lohk Hing Leih, a cluster of 27 buildings housing the remaining Hum clan. Len’s family left the village in 1949, spending a year-and-a-half in Hong Kong awaiting their papers for entry into Canada. The village remains very poor, comprised of mostly vacant buildings surrounded by rice paddies and vegetable gardens.

Ninety-year-old Mrs. Tam, looking remarkably spry and pleasant, incredibly, remembered Len, who used to play with her eldest son. The other village residents were too young to remember him, but they swiftly brought out some food offerings, the incense, paper money to burn before the family altar, and lit some Chinese firecrackers. These are age-old traditions, in honour of the Hum ancestors. There were no young people living in the village. They had all left to find jobs in the cities. We wonder if the village will even exist in 20 years’ time.

Call it fate or bashert that, from the 1940s, three different families who started off in China, one a Jewish refugee family in Shanghai and two native Chinese families living in small villages near Canton, would be reunited in Canada through marriage 70 years later. The biggest blessing is that, on May 11, 2024, a Szmuilowicz-Hum great-great-granddaughter celebrated her bat mitzvah in Toronto. We were all be thrilled to be there.

Valerie (Chan) Hum lives in Ottawa. She was born in Victoria, where her family have lived since 1893. Her grandparents ran the Panama Café at 1407 Government St. for many decades. This article was originally published by the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

ישראלים מרגישים לא בטוח ברחבי העולם

למלחמה בין ישראל והחמאס ברצועת עזה יש השלכות חמורות לגבי ביטחונם של הישראלים הגרים מחוץ למדינה. המראות הקשים של ההרוגים הרבים בעזה מסיבים נזק גדול לישראל. רבים בעולם כמעט ושכחו מה הביא לפעילות של ישראל בעזה – אירוע השבעה באוקטובר הנחשב לדבר בלתי נתפס. ולמרות זאת, בעולם מתעסקים כיום בעיקר בצד הפלסטיני הסובל מהרוגים ופצועים רבים, בו בזמן שרצועת עזה הולכת ונמחקת

הפגנות נגד ישראל, ישראלים, יהודים ומוסדות ישראלים ויהודים בעולם מתרחשות כל העת במקומות רבים. הכעס והשנאה המופנה כלפי ישראל כבר מזמן חצה את הקו האדום ולא זכורה תקופה כזו בעבר

בנוסף להפגנות יש גילוי שנאה ואלימות כלפי ישראלים ויהודים הגרים בערים שונות במערב. גם תיירים מישראל מרגישים כבר שלא בנוח לטייל במקומות שונים

המטה לביטחון לאומי פרסם לפני מספר שבועות היום את הערכת האיום לישראלים בחו”ל מצד גורמי טרור, במטרה להגביר את המודעות של הציבור הישראלי לאיומי הטרור במקומות שונים בעולם. במוקד: בקשה מהישראלים להימנע מהגעה למדינות שכנות של שיראל ובהן: לטורקיה, מרוקו, מצרים (כולל חצי האי סיני) וירדן. וכן מומלץ באופן כללי לא להחצין סממנים ישראליים או יהודים

בהודעה שפרסם המטה לביטחון לאומי נכתב כי בשנים האחרונות מזוהה מגמה מתמשכת של החמרה באיום כלפי ישראלים ויהודים בחו”ל, שהוחרפה מאז תחילת מלחמת חרבות ברזל (בחודש אוקטובר אשתקד), לאור עלייה במוטיבציה של גורמי טרור שונים בעולם לממש פיגועים. במסגרת זאת, בולט האיום האיראני שהתעצם ולצידו גם חמאס וגורמי ג’האד עולמי, המקדמים ביתר שאת פיגועים נגד ישראלים ויהודים מחוץ לישראל

עוד נכתב כי בחודשים האחרונים סוכלו עשרות פיגועים נגד יעדים ישראלים ברחבי העולם. לאור זאת, הדגישו במטה לביטחון לאומי כי פוטנציאל איומי הטרור כלפי ישראלים ויהודים כעבור למעלה משבעה מתחילת המלחמה – גבוה במיוחד

חודשים האחרונים התגברו הפרסומים של ארגונים אלו ותומכיהם, הקוראים ומעודדים לפגוע ביהודים וישראלים ברחבי העולם. במדינות המערב, האיום המרכזי הינו מצד מפגעים בודדים, אשר פועלים בהשראת הארגונים ועלולים לממש פיגועים כנגד ישראלים ויהודים, כפי שאירע למשל בשוויץ ששם נדקר אזרח מקומי יהודי בראשית חודש מרץ. זאת, ביתר שאת לאור אווירת המלחמה, האנטישמיות וההסתה חסרת התקדים נגד ישראל, ישראלים ויהודים ברחבי העולם

גורם המדיני ציין כי גם משחקי היורו שיתקיימו במהלך קיץ בגרמניה והאולימפיאדה שתתקיים בצרפת, שני אירועים שעשרות אלפי ישראלים צפויים לפקוד אותם, הם אירועי שיש לנקוט בהם זהירות מיוחדת. עיקר החשש הוא מגורמי ג’יהאד עולמי, כאשר גם ישראלים ויהודים על הכוונת, אמר הגורם הישראלי. בכל רגע נתון יש מאמצים חובקי עולם כדי לבצע פיגועים נגד ישראלים ויהודים, הוסיף אותו גורם. יחד עם גורמי ביטחון מקומיים, קהילת הביטחון של ישראל מבצעת אינספור פעולות על מנת לסכל. מפעם לפעם יש פרסומים על סיכולים, אך מה שמתפרסם הוא קצה הקרחון של מה שקורה באמת

אני עצמי חזרתי לאחרונה מנסיעה בת שבועיים בספרד כולל הערים ברצלונה ומדריד. לאור המצב המתואר לעיל נקטתי באמצעי זהירות מירביים. לא הסתובבתי ליד שום ארגון יהודי או ישראלי ולא דיברתי עברית בשום מקום. אני לא נושא שום סממנים ישראלים או יהודים בכל מקרה אך הפעם הקפדתי במיוחד. ולכן גם לא הבאתי עימי לטיול הפעם ספר בעברית. ראיתי בטיול לא מעט דגלים פלסטינים התלויים באזורים שונים בברצלונה וספרד וזה לא בדיוק נעים

Enjoy weekend in Montreal

A bike tour with Fitz Montreal. (photo © Fitz and Follwell Co)

There’s nothing like a weekend in Montreal, whether you’re in the mood for a classic bagel, a mouthwatering babka dripping with chocolate, or a heaping smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz’s Deli. Now that Porter Airlines has launched direct daily flights between Vancouver and Montreal, it’s a great time to explore this fabulous city, which oozes with personality, culture, history and great food.

We joined a fast-paced bike tour to see the city’s highlights, pedaling 15 kilometres through green alleyways, busy boulevards and along the Lachine Canal to get a broad overview of Montreal’s history. We rode through the Old Quarter, with its ancient stone buildings, following the canal past factories and warehouses reincarnated into swanky apartments. We puffed up the hill to the base of Mount Royal and zipped back down past the austere buildings of McGill University.

At Place d’Armes, we stopped to gaze at a pair of statues called “The Two Snobs.” On one side, a Francophone woman holds her poodle, looking with contempt at the head office of the Bank of Montreal, a symbol of English power. On the other, an Anglophone holds his pug, looking with similar disdain at the Notre-Dame Basilica, a symbol of the Catholic Church in Quebec. The statues hint loudly at the enduring, simmering tensions between English and French in Montreal.

photo - The Old Quarter of Montreal — The Old Quarter of Montreal. *(photo © Freddy Arciniegas – Arcpixel – Tourisme Montréal)*

We escaped the tourist crowds in the Old Quarter by heading to Mile End to join a food and history tour offered by the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Our guide, Avery Monette, a 23-year-old master’s student at Concordia, led us on a gastronomic feast as she described the city’s Jewish origins in 1760. That’s when Jews first arrived in Montreal to work as fur trade merchants. The community stayed small until the 1880s, when pogroms drove Eastern European Jews to the safety of Montreal’s Mile End. Over the next 90 years, it would become the largest Jewish community in Canada.

We bit into a sweet, rich cheese crown from Boulangerie Cheskie, a small kosher bakery in the neighbourhood, and then braved the cold wind to line up outside St-Viateur Bagel, one of Montreal’s two most famous bagel shops. Established in 1957 by Hyman Zeligman and Myer Lewkowicz, the store never closes. Ever. “In April 2023, there was an ice and snowstorm that knocked out all the electricity in the area,” Monette recalled. “Even then, this place was open!”

We strolled along rue Jeanne-Mance in Mile End, where frum families pushed strollers alongside us and a man wearing a shtreimel strode by, headed for the synagogue with his tallit tucked under his arm. The Jewish influence was easily spotted, with most houses having mezuzot on their doors and many with the skeleton of a sukkah in their front yard.

By the 1950s, Jews in Montreal had migrated to the middle class, and many left Mile End for larger homes in Côte Saint-Luc, Hampstead and Côte-des-Neiges. We passed the College Français, once the home of the B’nai Jacob Synagogue, which was known as the Carnegie Hall of cantorial singing in its heyday.

Our Vancouver jackets were feeling pretty inadequate in Montreal weather by the time we arrived at Fairmount Bagel, where the line out the door was even longer than at St-Viateur. Once inside, we were surrounded by garlic, pumpernickel, cranberry and muesli bagels, as well as matzah with sesame, onion and poppy seeds. While none of it is kosher, the store is still owned by the same Shlafman family that first opened it in 1949.

A few doors away is Wilensky’s, a small restaurant with origins in 1932 and family members still at the helm. With its Formica counters, bar stools and what could easily be the world’s tiniest washroom, the store feels like a 1930s time capsule. Monette orders the Wilensky Special, an original family recipe featuring beef salami, beef bologna and mustard on a grilled roll. No special requests or modifications are allowed, not for us or for Anthony Bourdain and Mordecai Richler, both of whom were customers.

On Boulevard Saint-Laurent, new stories mingle with the old. We picked up a babka at Hof Kelsten, where Jeffrey Finkelstein is turning heads with his challah, rugelach and rye. We passed Leonard Cohen’s grey-stoned triplex, a house he lived in from 1968 and that’s still owned by his family. “He was well known for padding around the streets in the slippers he bought right here,” Monette says, gesturing at J. Schreter, a shoe shop on the corner.

photo - Lunch at Schwartz’s Deli — Lunch at Schwartz’s Deli. *(photo © Eva Blue)*

Between the bagels, the babkas and the Wilensky Special, it’s hard to make room for more food, but the length of the line outside Schwartz’s Deli tells us this one is not skippable, so on we go. Famous for its smoked meat sandwiches since its inception in 1928, the deli is now owned by Celine Dion and her partners, who have kept things much the same, adding a smoked meat poutine to the menu. Take a bite of one of Schwartz’s sandwiches, which literally bulge with hefty portions of meat, and you understand precisely why the little deli is such a cultural icon in the city. Quite simply, it’s unforgettable. It’s a fitting symbol for the city of Montreal, which is bursting with flavour.

Whether you come for the food, the history, the arts scene or the culture, Montreal is charmingly seductive, and so vastly different from Vancouver that it feels like an entirely different country. Now just four-and-a-half hours away, it’s an easy decision to put this sophisticated French city on the itinerary.

If you go …

• In April, Porter Airlines launched its daily round trip service between Vancouver and Montreal (flyporter.com)

• A bike tour with Fitz Montreal is a great way to explore Montreal’s highlights, with many sights packed into an exhilarating, fast-paced ride (fitzmontreal.com)

• Museum of Jewish Montreal offers regular Beyond the Bagel Tours in the spring, summer and fall. The three-hour tours include food and range from $79-$95 per person (museemontrealjuif.ca/beyond-the-bagel)

• Humaniti Hotel offers sophisticated accommodation in the heart of the city, steps from Old Montreal, the Palais des congrès and the Quartier des Spectacles (humanitihotel.com)

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

Exploring ideas, worlds

“If there is one thing we learn during difficult times, it’s that community plays a crucial role, fostering unity, resilience and offering emotional support,” writes Dana Camil Hewitt, director of the annual Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, in her introduction to this year’s event, which will once again bring community members together to share stories and conversations – and in a difficult time.

The festival opens Feb. 10 with playwright, journalist and author Michael Posner in conversation with Alan Twigg, founder and editor for 33 years of BC BookWorld, about Posner’s three-volume biography of musician, composer and poet Leonard Cohen. The opening night includes a live musical performance with Harriet Frost and Martin Gotfrit, which illustrates perfectly how the influence of books extends beyond the printed page.

The world around us and how it shapes who we are, and vice versa, is front and centre in the Feb. 11 festival event Essays as Life Stories, featuring Vancouver’s Yosef Wosk and Hamilton’s Gary Barwin.

Traveling beyond the world

In his new book, Naked in a Pyramid: Travels & Observations, scholar, rabbi and philanthropist Yosef Wosk brings readers along on his extraordinary journeys throughout the world. But this is no Rick Steves guidebook. There are no hotel recommendations or Top 10 must-see lists. Far from it. Rather than inspiring wanderlust, in fact, some of Wosk’s adventures will make the reader happy to be home in an easy chair experiencing vicariously rather than accompanying him on these not-always-alluring quests.

Wosk acknowledges that travel for him is not about R&R but always about adventure, challenging himself to discover not only the world but his place in it. Travel, for him, is “more of an intuitive imperative, a pilgrimage to the ends of the earth so that I might know both the planet and myself better.”

To these ends (literally), Wosk has traveled to both the north and the south poles. His reflections on being – within a little more than a year of each other – at the figurative top and bottom of the planet, lead to fascinating metaphysical contemplations. He is also provoked to contest mundane assumptions when he sees, at the South Pole, an upside-down globe. Why, he realizes he has never contemplated, should north be on top?

Wosk does not just see stuff, or even experience it, like an ordinary traveler, but finds himself transported beyond even the remote locales he visits to some supernatural planes. Near the North Pole, for example, he alarms travel-mates by laying down, albeit densely insulated, on the frozen Arctic ground “like some marooned sapien seal.” Becoming one with the planet’s most northerly extremity, he recalls, “I was seized by this unanticipated epiphany of transcendent unity.”

The intensity with which he lives the places he encounters makes for a fascinating read and those of us who lack his depth of connection with the ethereal may feel pangs of jealousy, if not inferiority, at failing to experience as profoundly.

He visits Venice, the birthplace of Marco Polo – well, one of the reputed birthplaces – and finds resolve from the “Master of Travelers, the one who dared.” But Venice, as magnificent as it is, seems to be among the least remarkable of Wosk’s destinations.

“I have explored caves and caverns in Israel, Thailand and deep within the Rock of Gibraltar where Neanderthals lived for over 100,000 years, and also entered the coastal caves along the cerulean Na Pali coast in Kauai,” he writes. “Gazing into the luminous waters of the Blue Grotto in Capri, one of the most enchanting islands on the planet, one senses its womb of wonders.”

Claustrophobia is a recurring theme (for the reader, if less so the writer), with reminiscences of crawling on his back into a sarcophagus, descending into the bowels of a Soviet-era nuclear-powered Arctic icebreaker, or meditating (naked) in the subterranean hollows of the pyramid that gives the book its title.

The book is deeply personal, including revealing insights into his deepest thoughts, as well as the sorts of travel nightmares to which anyone can relate, such as being stuck together with a sulky travel companion who he had considered a potential love interest, but who turns out to be the roommate from hell. He seems to recognize that his well-intentioned psychoanalyzing of her behaviour may not have been the remedy he had hoped.

His sense of being an outsider is not merely social but otherworldly.

“I have always felt like a fool, somewhat awkward in an unfamiliar world – as if I have just awakened from a distant dream and been planted, like Adam, in a strange Garden of Gaia. I spent most of my life as an unrepentant pilgrim, exploring often exotic and embarrassing sensations of mind, body and soul.”

He openly admits that some of these sensations are enhanced by herbal or chemical assistance.

“On a beach off the road from Pafos to Limassol, in southern Cyprus, a friend and I took LSD at the fabled birthplace of Aphrodite,” he writes. “The beach was gravel and the waters rough but as the long, foaming waters born of the massive surf around the Rock reached the shore, one could easily imagine the earth being impregnated by the semen-bubbled surf and picture the goddess of love emerging from the sea.”

The book is about travel, but Wosk also covers voyages more broadly defined, such as the process of moving through life itself, including the reflection that a great rabbi imparted to him.

“One of my teachers, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, used to tell us that you don’t have to wait until you’re dead to die; that one can be involved in a succession of deaths and rebirths, that there is non-mortal death and resurrection while still alive,” writes Wosk.

In a harrowing experience while illicitly climbing the Egyptian pyramid of the title, he seems to have exactly this sort of non-mortal death, which may well have been entirely mortal had things turned any further awry.

Wosk has rubbed shoulders (or, more accurately, minds) with greats like Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan and Joseph Campbell. He worked at the right hand of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel as his teaching assistant and calls the late humanitarian author “one of the most influential mentors in my life.”

If Wosk sometimes seems a figure remote from the ordinary human, he yanks himself back down to earth in numerous segments, such as explaining how he overcame his intimidation at applying for Harvard’s divinity school. He eventually conquers his resistance and completes the graduate school application in the mechanic’s anteroom while his car is being serviced nearby. Even by the standards of a vegetarian, which he is, Wosk’s culinary tastes are decidedly and literally down to earth. (Favourite food? The potato.)

He refers modestly to his extensive philanthropy, which includes the Beit Wosk Community Centre, in Ashkelon, Israel, and the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (named for his late mother), but elides hundreds of other contributions over the years.

He pays tribute to his late father Morris (“MJ”) and late uncle Ben, who arrived as children in this country. The brothers did odd jobs before starting a business collecting and repairing used pots and pans, which they shined up and sold around town using a horse and buggy. From this, they graduated to a storefront and later a furniture chain. Eventually, the brothers reshaped the city’s skyline with some of Vancouver’s most recognizable high-rise residential towers. To say the family came a long way from rural Ukraine is an understatement. MJ Wosk is estimated to have donated $50 million to a variety of causes.

It is difficult to sum up this book as this or that genre. While one section is an extended poem, much of the rest reads as prose poetry. Moreover, it is travel journal, philosophy treatise, theological tract and memoir of a person who curates and collects not just fascinating objects (which he does) but ideas, experiences and memories. Perhaps the book could be best described as an exhibition, a retrospective of a just a few of the intangible treasures Wosk has amassed in a lifetime that seems more unique than every life, by definition, is.

As fellow thinker John Ralston Saul said of this book, “He brings us a life intensely lived.” To appreciate how intensely, one really needs to immerse oneself in these pages.

– Pat Johnson

Exploring language’s many facets

Gary Barwin’s Imagining Imagining is reflective, sentimental, intellectual and absurd. His facility with the English language is remarkable and he is more well-read than most of us, but there are various levels of understanding of any text, and everyone will take away something of value from this imaginative and mind-expanding collection of essays.

The multiple-award-winning author of some 30 books, including the bestselling Yiddish for Pirates, Barwin is also a musician, composer and artist. He draws upon all his varied skills and interests in his imaginings. He begins with reflections on the Hebrew alphabet, where the Book of Genesis says the world began: “the earth was without form and void until God gave shape or reality to it, all with words. With the letters that form the Hebrew alphabet.” He talks of the letters’ sounds and shapes, even illustrates the letter shin with an extra arm on the left that looks like it is topped with a crown, the image of which appears on the tefillin box that Orthodox Jews place on their forehead for morning prayers. According to a kabbalist text, there is a letter missing from the Hebrew alphabet and some think this four-armed shin might be it. “So, the thinking goes, we might already know what it looks like. But we don’t know what new sound it might make, this new sound that might heal the universe.”

While lauding language and its potential as a cause for hope, Barwin warns that language can also lull and trick us. “We must always look very carefully at language. At its beauty, its mystery. Its power to make us think and feel things. Its power to make and remake the world,” he writes.

If it’s not obvious already, Barwin is a big thinker. And he has a big vocabulary. Imagining Imagining might be a book to read as an ebook, for easy access to a dictionary. For the most part, however, his skill as a writer means that we get the gist if not the whole idea, that our curiosity is piqued and we continue to revel in our own thoughts long after we finish reading an essay.

Those who have read Barwin’s novels will know that he has a great sense of humour, and there are many smiling, even laugh-aloud, moments in these essays. One essay is entirely devoted to humour, and it’s fascinating – and funny. In it, he shares his favourite poem, “Modern Poem,” written by Martin Laba: “one, two, / three, four, / five, you idiot.”

“I like it because we can empathize with the feeling of having read something, perhaps a modern poem, something that is so hard to understand, that appears to be saying something willfully inaccessible or that appears so entirely pointless that it seems to be deliberately trying to make you feel like an idiot,” writes Barwin. “I like the poem because of the nice twist, the surprise at the end, the shock of recognition. Oh yes, I know poems like this. And I know that feeling.”

There are many shocks of recognition in Imagining Imagining, as there are shocks of non-recognition. Barwin is a smart, accomplished person and his views on things – from Hebrew letters, to insomnia, to ampersands, to his grandfather’s moustache, and more – will have you thinking about yours in new ways. For example, that chapter on humour stresses the immense value in laughter, not the least of which is that it “gives us an alternative to despair,” it allows us “the ability to frame our experience.”

“Through humour, we are able to stand outside what’s happening and look at it philosophically. Through humour, we find a way to engage, to think about what is happening and still have agency,” writes Barwin.

Engagement, community, the interconnectedness of all things. Barwin challenges readers to think outside the box, to reconsider what is a box, whether a box can ever truly exist. Speaking “mostly but not entirely metaphorically,” Barwin asks about the need for (cell) walls, “don’t things morph into one another, if only eventually? The same is true of concepts and abstractions. One person’s manbun is another’s mantra. Is it true that someone’s pain is my pain and it is only the self and society which create reasons to keep them at a distance? I want my thinking and feeling to reflect the fundamental unipanrhizomatubiquity between/of things.”

After reading Imagining Imagining, you should have a notion of what “unipanrhizomatubiquity” means, even though Prof. Google doesn’t. That feeling of getting it, not getting it, is an unsettling sensation perhaps, but it’s one that propels questions, discovery. That makes what seems impossible potentially possible. That makes reading – and so many other things – exciting and worthwhile.

– Cynthia Ramsay

For the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, guide visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Preserving links to past

Screenshot from Jordan Amit’s video on the former Jewish settlement of Edenbridge, Sask. The synagogue and the Jewish cemetery are cared for by the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation.

Almost 120 years ago, 56 Jews fled Lithuania and ended up in a remote Saskatchewan prairie that would become the community of Edenbridge. The town and its people have scattered to the winds – but the spirit of the place comes to life again in a short video by North Vancouver filmmaker Jordan Amit.

In addition to filmmaking – which he hopes to turn into his main gig – Amit has a window-washing business and, for years, traveled to Alberta and Saskatchewan for seasonal work. Through the Chabad rabbi in Saskatoon, he learned about the abandoned Jewish settlement, which lies about two-and-a-half hours northeast of Saskatoon – the last leg on a dirt road.

The shul is beautifully maintained – or it was when Amit took his camera there – and the small synagogue is open to the public. Said to be the oldest shul in the province, the site, which includes the Jewish cemetery, is cared for by the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, which was granted a 40-acre plot in 1987, when the rest of the Jewish settlement’s land was sold.

photo - The Jewish cemetery at the former Jewish settlement of Edenbridge, Sask — The Jewish cemetery at the former Jewish settlement of Edenbridge, Sask. *(photo by Jordan Amit)*

The Litvaks, Lithuanian Jews, who came here did not set out for one of the coldest, most unforgiving places on earth. They traveled first to South Africa, where one of their party, Sam Vickar, saw an ad for cheap land in the Canadian West. They uprooted again, arriving in 1906 at what they would call Edenbridge.

Originally, they wanted to call it Jewtown, but the government balked. They chose Edenbridge as a sort of Anglicization of “yidden bridge,” reflecting the bridge that traversed the small Carrot River nearby.

On their initial 160 acres, bought for $10, they built Beth Israel Synagogue. Expanding out into other fields, three schools, a Jewish community hall and numerous houses would eventually form the structures of a community that, at its peak in the 1920s, was home to 170 people.

Indigenous neighbours helped teach them how to survive the first winter with sod-roofed dugouts.

While other Jewish settlements in Saskatchewan were funded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, Edenbridge does not appear to have received such support, Amit said, though he doesn’t know that for sure.

The Depression and the general trend toward urbanization started a decline in the town and, by 1964, the synagogue ceased operation. The exact date of Edenbridge’s transition into ghost town status is vague, in part because local farmers moved to Saskatoon and returned seasonally to farm.

At the cemetery, the last gravestone is dated 2000, a departed resident who chose to be interred in the cemetery of the abandoned village. The last bar mitzvah at the shul was more recent – the child of one of the community’s descendants, in 2021. Amit had his own bar there, too. Born in Israel, he came with his family to Vancouver as a child and never became bar mitzvah. So, his friend and rabbi in Saskatoon suggested he have a belated ceremony at the historical site, and it was the first since 1976.

As more people have seen the video online, descendants of the settlers have reached out to him. He is piecing more history of Edenbridge together, and also is on the lookout for additional off-the-beaten-path Jewish (and non-Jewish) sites to explore for his growing online video explorations.

photo - Jordan Amit — Jordan Amit (photo from Jordan Amit)

“I always have this feeling when I see Jewish sites that are kind of in the middle of nowhere, there’s something so fascinating about it,” he said, recalling a trip to the Indian province of Kerala, where he explored three abandoned synagogues. “When you go into the synagogue, it’s a special experience. You go in and you just feel this presence of the building and the silence.”

Amit invites anyone with knowledge of Edenbridge, or ideas for future videos, to contact him at [email protected]. He also recommends road-trippers make the diversion to the remote location to see the place themselves.

“It’s fully open to the public,” he said. “You just open the latch and walk inside. You only see that in Saskatchewan, that kind of trust. They just trust that it’s going to get taken care of and respected.”

In the story of Edenbridge, Amit contemplates the settlers’ tenacity and the opportunities, sometimes hard won, of newcomers to a land.

“[It is] something we could learn from, that despite difficulties of life and all the odds against us in realizing our dreams, really, if we put our mind to it, we can do whatever we want,” he said. “We can self-realize and create the life that we want, just like they did.”

An Aardvark gap year

Vancouverite Eitan Nurick, right, with Aardvark madrich (counselor) Alon. (photo from Aardvark Israel)

“When my siblings came back from their year abroad and couldn’t stop raving about it, I couldn’t help but experience it myself. When the day came and the program started, I was anxious, as expected, but mostly excited,” said Eitan Nurick, 18, who went to King David High School.

Nurick was referring to Aardvark Israel, which offers four-to-10-month gap-year programs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, specializing in internships; volunteering, partnered with Masa Israel Journey and Israel Volunteering Association; and technology, partnered with the Developers Institute.

“The biggest learning curve was definitely figuring out how to live with four complete strangers,” said Nurick, from Tel Aviv. “I learned that the most important thing to do was to communicate and let your roommates know what you need, eventually coming to a decision that works for everyone.

“Something that I have been especially loving is my internship,” he said. “I work at Inklude, a tattoo studio…. While running the social media, and overall helping out around the studio, I have also been given the opportunity to learn how to tattoo, which ties in perfectly with my love for art. I really feel like I have been welcomed into the workplace and have made meaningful connections with my co-workers. So far, my experience in Israel and with Aardvark Israel has been amazing. I have been able to strengthen my bond with my religion and culture, as well as learn lifelong skills that will stick with me forever.”

Toronto student Lisa Fireman, 18, who attended TanenbaumCHAT high school, also is benefiting from her internship, which is at Eden Gallery in Tel Aviv. She described it as her favourite part of Aardvark.

“I am currently helping plan four events for Art Basel in Miami,” she said. “This has been the experience of a lifetime for me. I love my boss here and feel as if I am being trusted and treated as a real member of the Eden Gallery team. As someone going into art history in university, this could not be a more ideal internship. I love spending my days at the gallery, knowing that this experience will help me in my future path.”

She admitted, “It can be stressful living alone, but I wouldn’t want to do it in any other way. I have gained so much independence, friends I love with my whole heart, and a job that makes me feel so fulfilled.”

photo - Toronto’s Lisa Fireman, second from the left, on a Shabbaton with fellow Aardvarkians Maya, Hayley and Dina — Toronto’s Lisa Fireman, second from the left, on a Shabbaton with fellow Aardvarkians Maya, Hayley and Dina. *(photo from Aardvark Israel)*

Fireman is preparing for her spring semester in Jerusalem.

“A lot of the gap year promotional testimonies write as if gap year is all peaches and sunshine,” she said. “While they aren’t wrong about how much fun it can be, being on Aardvark is so much more than that. My gap year story started last October, when my best friends were considering gap year programs. Out of a fear of going into college without them, I started looking into Aardvark Israel…. I fell so hard for the program that, even when all of my friends eventually decided against gap year, I still committed to spending time on Aardvark. So I went. Absolutely alone. And it was as terrifying as it sounds.”

Fireman had anxiety surrounding making new friends, but put herself out there anyway.

“I did this by asking people to be my ‘bus buddy’ on Tiyul Tuesdays, going to Wednesday night programming, and hosting Shabbat dinners,” she said. “I started to realize that everyone on Aardvark is just as alone as I was. We all had come from around the world and had to create our inner circle … so everyone was open and actively putting themselves into new social situations.”

Last month, Aardvark Israel’s first international trip since COVID took place – five days in the Czech Republic. Both Nurick and Fireman participated. Both students moved to Israel last August.

For more on Aardvark’s gap-year programs, go to aardvarkisrael.com.

– Courtesy Aardvark Israel & Masa Israel Journey