In this scene from their solo physical comedy The Moaning Yoni, Joylyn Secunda is playing the vulva character, Yoni, who is based on the archetype of the Jewish mother (inspired by their own grandmother) – Yoni is strangling the Disembodied Voice of the Patriarchy with a tampon string. (photo by Eric Zennstrom)
Joylyn Secunda is an actor, dancer and puppeteer. In The Moaning Yoni, Secunda brings to life more than a dozen characters to tell the story of a young college student named Zoë who is just trying to fit in, until one day she applies an elixir, and her vulva starts to talk. From Tinder to Tantra, The Moaning Yoni explores the intersection of gender, sexuality and spirituality.
Secunda has performed The Moaning Yoni some 50 times in cities across Canada. Other recent credits include Scrooge in A Wonderheads Christmas Carol (the Wonderheads), Zephyr in Crisis on Planet Z (Monster Theatre), Seek in Pop Pop (Presentation House) and puppeteer in The Breathing Hole (National Arts Centre).
The Moaning Yoni contains mature language and sexual themes. The Feb. 3, 7:30 p.m., show at the NEST on Granville Island will be hosted by drag artist Continental Breakfast. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased from eventbrite.com.
Toby Rubin was invested as the new president of CHW Vancouver on Oct. 16. (photo by Sid Akselrod)
A vast amount of progress has been made in gender equality in recent decades, but organizations where women come together for philanthropic work and social connections remain desirable and necessary, says Toby Rubin, the new president of CHW Vancouver.
Founded by Jewish women in 1917, after a visit from Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold, CHW started out as Hadassah Organization of Canada. In 1921, Canadian Hadassah affiliated with World WIZO and became known Hadassah-WIZO Organization of Canada (later condensed to Canadian Hadassah-WIZO). CHW defines itself as a non-political, non-partisan, national network of dedicated volunteers who believe that excellence and advancement of education, healthcare and social services transcend politics, religion and national boundaries.
Rubin has been a volunteer with the local chapter of the organization for years and was invested as the president at an event Oct. 16 at the Richmond Country Club. In an interview with the Independent, she attempted to dispel some misconceptions.
First and foremost, she said, is the concept that CHW “is a bubbe organization.”
“We have really changed,” she said. A new chapter of 25-to-40-year-old women – including Rubin’s daughter and a cadre of new leaders who were centre-stage at the installation luncheon – has launched and already held their first fundraising event. They raised $5,000 for JOLT, a leadership development curriculum being developed by Young Judaea Canada.
Another misconception, Rubin said, is that all funds from CHW’s philanthropy go to Israel. Rubin and a group of Canadian activists have just returned from a tour of Hadassah projects in Israel, but she stressed that local and Canadian projects are also supported by the chapter’s work. Among the initiatives the group supports is SOS, Starting Over Safely, for victims of domestic violence; scholarships for an LGBTQ+ kids’ camp; and Franny’s Fund.
The latter program was launched by Rebecca Snukal, a Calgary defence lawyer with two decades of experience navigating the legal system and social safety net through some emotionally and administratively perilous cases. But when she and her own family were rocked by crisis, she came to understand how unwieldy the system is – even people with expertise in the field have challenges accessing the legal and psychological supports they require. Snukal was the guest speaker at the October event.
Something that Rubin especially wants to dispel is the idea that CHW’s work is accessible only to Jews. The foremost example, she said, comes from Hadassah Medical Centre in Israel, where triage is based on medical need, to the extent that injured terrorists have been treated based on the severity of their condition alongside victims of their attack.
Also at the meeting, Daniella Givon, a past president, was honoured for her many years of commitment to the organization and the broader community. The meeting also expressed gratitude to outgoing presidents Stephanie Rusen and Sasha Gerson.
In addition to her role with CHW, Rubin is co-executive director of Kehila Society of Richmond, which connects Jewish people in Richmond with one another and with businesses, health and social service agencies and community resources. She is also a board member of Jewish Seniors Alliance and Better at Home committee of the City of Richmond.
Rubin comes to CHW naturally – her mother, Linda Hilford, is a member and both her grandmothers, Vera Himelfarb and Rae Moss, were involved on the Prairies back in the day.
The enthusiasm Rubin and other members of the local chapter exhibit is a reflection, she said, of exciting changes at the national level where, under the fresh leadership of national chief executive officer Lisa Colt-Kotler, the organization has seen dramatic progress in the past couple of years.
“She’s just really pumped energy into it and she’s updated it, and is working at making us more mainstream,” Rubin said of Colt-Kotler. Technology has been a boon, she added, allowing members from across the country to conveniently meet regularly without getting on a plane.
Times have changed from when a large proportion of Canadian women did not work outside the home. But those social and economic changes have not altered one fundamental need, said Rubin.
“We are really about bringing women together, to empower them in their philanthropic needs and introduce them and network them with other women,” she said. “We just want them to meet each other, be there, support each other, share their resources. Ultimately, what brought me to this organization 30 years ago – aside from the fact that I have grandparents and a mom who were involved and I love Israel – was women. The ceiling has broken in those 30 years but it’s still there and we need to be there for each other.”
For decades, CHW was most closely associated in the public mind with Hadassah Bazaar, a massive undertaking that ended about 15 years ago. The explosive growth of thrift stores, combined with the immense resources required to execute the annual event, led to the decision to end the tradition. But Rubin said a new initiative is soon to launch nationally that nods to that history – possibly an online version of the bazaar or something similar. Plans are in development.
Things have come a long way, but Rubin said expectations have grown in some ways and getting together with women experiencing similar things is no less valuable than it was in her mother’s or her grandmothers’ time.
“I think women still have a long way to go and we need to support each other and be there for each other, lift each other up,” she said. “I’m trying to be a mom and I’m trying to do a job and I can’t be Superwoman and [it’s good] to know that’s OK – nobody is. I think that’s truly, truly important.”
Left to right, Katherine Matlashewski (as Shayna Schneider), Advah Soudack (as Margaret Grant) and Amitai Marmorstein (as Jankl Schneider) in Courage Now, playing at the Firehall Arts Centre until Dec. 4. (photo by Youn Park)
One does not often get a chance to see a world première of a play in Vancouver. After writing my preview article on Courage Now in the last edition of the Independent, I was looking forward with great anticipation to seeing the final product. I was not disappointed.
It is a difficult story to tell but it is done with such sensitivity and style that I highly recommend seeing it. As a child of a Holocaust survivor, any story of courage and heroism arising out of that era resonates with me – this one in particular had me in tears.
From the moment you walk into the intimate Firehall Arts Centre theatre, you know you are about to see something special. The set is austere – a desk, a bench, a lattice-like trellis, an empty wall-mounted picture frame – with a pagoda-style roof and an archway backlit with vibrant colours. (Kudos to set designer Kimira Reddy and lighting designer Itai Erdal.)
To summarize the backstory, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1940, against the instructions of his government, issued more than 2,300 handwritten visas in a 30-day period to save Jews trying to leave Poland and Lithuania. He was supported in his decision by his wife, Yukiko, who knew the price the family would pay for going against the government edicts. And a price was paid: career loss, humiliation and Sugihara’s self-imposed postwar exile to Russia for 16 years.
The play follows what appear to be two separate narratives that intersect in an unexpected way in the final scene. In 1986, Yukiko (playwright Manami Hara) is forced to revisit wartime when a visitor from Vancouver, Margaret Grant, born Shayna Schneider (Advah Soudack), comes for answers from Sugihara as to what happened to her father after he put her on a train out of Kaunas when she was 13 years old. She has resented her father through the years, feeling abandoned and betrayed by his sending her off alone; she is also coping with a difficult divorce and her own daughter’s hatred. Sugihara has recently died, however, and Margaret must turn to Yukiko for answers instead.
The play opens with Yukiko waking from a dream where she is visited by the ghost of her husband. Then Margaret enters her garden. She tells Yukiko, “I am a Sugihara Jew, Sempo saved my life.” The play then moves through a series of memory flashbacks, as the audience is transported back and forth between 1940 Kaunas and 1986 Japan.
Katherine Matlashewski plays the teenage Shayna and Amitai Marmorstein plays her father, Jankl. Jankl visits Sugihara (Ryota Kaneko) to plead for visas on behalf of the thousands of Jews who have been lining up every day outside the consul’s office. In a touching and poignant scene, something as simple as a shared cup of coffee gives you a sense of the integrity and honour of these two men as they strive to do the right thing. Kaneko plays Sugihara with a quiet intensity and Marmorstein portrays Jankl with dignity. The scene where he sees Shayna off at the train station is heartbreaking – he watches his only child (his “little mouse,” as he calls her) walk away from him, tattered suitcase in hand, in a fog of smoke and the eerie sound of a train whistle in the distance.
In many ways, the journeys of the two women are love stories. Yukiko grapples with the grief of losing her husband, moving through the stages towards acceptance, and Margaret comes to the realization that it was her father’s love that put her on that train in 1940. Both characters become conduits for the other’s catharsis. When Yukiko shares her husband’s journal from that time, Margaret says, “My father lives in that journal.”
All five of the actors do credit to their roles in this ensemble piece but Hara and Soudack’s performances are sublime. The play is particularly effective when all five actors are on stage at the same time in the memory flashback vignettes.
My one criticism is that there is quite a bit of Japanese dialogue between Kaneko and Hara and it would have been helpful to have either a reader board translating or a program insert with translations.
Hara has penned a lovely tribute to Sugihara and I, for one, am grateful to her for her work.
Courage Now is at the Firehall until Dec. 4. For tickets, visit firehallartscentre.ca.
Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
Ellen Schwartz, founder of Project Give Back. (photo from LinkedIn)
Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Choices, the largest celebration of women’s philanthropy in the community, takes place Nov. 3 at Congregation Beth Israel. At the event, featured speaker Ellen Schwartz, founder of Project Give Back, will talk about raising a son with a neurodegenerative disease and how her son Jacob helped her “live a more grounded, purposeful and present life.”
Project Give Back is targeted to elementary students in Ontario. Established in 2007 by Schwartz, a Toronto-based teacher, community advocate and mother of three children, it started as a program she created for her fourth grade classroom and it is designed to teach compassion and concern for community. The program, which selects and trains teachers to deliver its specialized curriculum, runs weekly from October to May in partner schools. In it, students help do the teaching by explaining the value of a worthy cause to their fellow classmates. Since its inception, Project Give Back has helped bring awareness to hundreds of charities.
“The beauty about Project Give Back is children teach us about what matters to them, through their involvement with a charity that they or their family are connected to,” Schwartz told the Independent.
Fifteen years after starting the program, Schwartz said many early participants continue to be actively involved in charitable work as they enter into young adulthood.
“We definitely have seen many of our alumni actively giving and making change in their communities,” she said. “Some of our graduates have published books, with proceeds donated to their chosen and personal causes.”
Some of the many grassroots charities to which Project Give Back has recently brought attention are Sending Sunshine, a program directed at curbing loneliness in the elderly population; Nanny Angel Network, which provides free in-home child care in Canada; and the Super Sophia Project, a group whose goal is to offer hope to children and their families battling cancer.
As Project Give Back bases much of its lessons on personal connection and in-class discussions, it, like many organizations, was affected by the pandemic and had to shift its operations accordingly.
“We had to pivot quickly to online learning. All of a sudden, we looked at the windows of the students and we had family members attending lessons as well as pets, grandparents, etc. That was beautiful to see,” Schwartz recalled.
“Unfortunately, there was a tremendous gap in education and, while many schools were able to continue, almost at the switch of a button, others truly struggled. In these schools, often school was a safe place for many children and many didn’t have the opportunity to reset online quickly. We launched Project Give Back Connects during this time. This was a way to connect powerful messages and resources to classroom teachers, which they could access and share with their students.”
For her Vancouver presentation, Schwartz plans to discuss some of the life lessons she learned from her son Jacob, who died in 2019 at the age of 21. Only months after he was born, he was diagnosed with Canavan disease, which damages the brain’s nerve cells. Jacob wasn’t able to walk, talk or see.
“I will share the best piece of advice I was ever given. It was on a folded note left in my mailbox 25 years ago, [and] I still don’t know who left it there,” said Schwartz. “I will touch on tricks and tips to living a life filled with purpose and meaning as well as shaping grief in a manner that allows us to move forward.”
Currently, Project Give Back only operates in Ontario, but Schwartz is eager to investigate operating in Vancouver schools.
“Our plan is to continue to grow slowly and carefully, never compromising on the quality of our program,” she said. “Sometimes, bigger does not mean better. I would rather teach less children and do it well so that spark becomes a flame, rather than teaching more and hoping to ignite a spark.”
Schwartz also co-founded Jacob’s Ladder, Canadian Foundation for the Control of Neurodegenerative Diseases, with her husband Jeff in 1998. In its 21 years of operation, Jacob’s Ladder raised more than $3 million for research, education and awareness of neurodegenerative illnesses, as well as research into treatments.
Ellen Schwartz has written two books: Lessons from Jacob: A Disabled Son Teaches His Mother About Courage, Hope and the Joy of Living Life to the Fullest and Without One Word Spoken. She has been honoured by the Israel Cancer Research Fund, Ve’ahavta, Aish Toronto, Sick Kids Hospital, and Brilliant Minded Women. And she has been awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal, a Meritorious Service Decoration by the Governor General of Canada and a Canada 150 Exemplary Canadian Medal.
“I am hoping to make some new friends and inspire your community with a story I am honoured to be able to share,” Schwartz said, when asked about what she expects from her visit.
The community speakers participating in Choices this year are the daughters of Holocaust survivor Robert Krell: Shoshana Lewis, Simone Kallner and Michaela Singerman. They will share how they honour their father’s experience.
Also part of the Nov. 3, 5 p.m., event will be a marketplace including several local vendors.
Tickets for Choices are $60 and include dinner. However, there is a minimum donation of $154 to support the Federation annual campaign and, for first-time Choices attendees, a minimum donation of $36. Register at jewishvancouver.com/choices.
Sam Margolishas written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
Imagine an interview where the interviewer wanders around the office, conducting work while asking intrusive personal questions. The interviewee trails behind. An hour-long appointment stretches into two. Things get further off track. The potential employee, apologizing profusely, gets herself out of the building and into the safety of her car. Cheeks burning, she drives herself home, wondering, “What the heck was that?” Days later, she fields phone calls from the interviewer, asking why she won’t accept an offer that is a dollar or two more than minimum wage. The amount would not likely cover the gas, taxes, work clothes and household/childcare coverage it would take to do the job. Advanced degrees and experience don’t matter, she hears. This is the going rate.
Meanwhile, at home, the same potential employee “works” at the numerous tasks that pop up every day. She self-drafts a clothing pattern, because a kid needs pyjamas of the right size and the pattern she has doesn’t fit. She mends a favourite pair of school pants. She prepares multiple meals in advance, baking bread ahead, too. These tasks are lined up for quick moments to spare amid managing homework and extracurricular activities. She contacts tradespeople to see if they can provide affordable repair quotes, responds to school emails and fits in applying for other jobs or doing her current work as she can. She is sadly behind in keeping up with her friends and family, but doesn’t know when to fit that in.
In between, she walks the dog, meets the kids at the school bus, takes them to medical appointments, or pays bills. She politely tries to get out of volunteer commitments that moms “should” do for the school and community organizations.
This might sound familiar to parents, mostly mothers. It’s all the work that goes unnoticed and is uncompensated in our society. Daring to seek compensation for some of these skills is seen as selfish. After all, these parents (usually mothers) are told, “If you expect to earn anything for your experience or education, you’re mistaken. You ‘chose’ not to stay consistently in the full-time workforce. You chose to have children/get married/study a less-lucrative topic in university….” The list goes on.
Our society functions in many ways because of the unpaid labour. It’s most often women’s physical, emotional, social labour done behind the scenes. It feels new and unfair in every generation, I suspect, even as some things change for women slowly over time.
As I study Ketubot, which is a Babylonian talmudic tractate dedicated, at least in theory, to marriage contracts, I’ve had competing demands on my time. It’s forced me to read aspects of the text differently. When the rabbis debated these issues (1,600 to 2,100 years ago, give or take), women’s roles were more circumscribed. However, some of the basic arguments seem to arise in ways that don’t surprise me.
Some of the takeaway nuggets from this tractate…. When a woman marries, her husband is owed her labour and the fruit from her properties. Even if she brings servants into the marriage, there are certain tasks she must do herself. Her virtue and loyalty are worth a monetary value in the marriage.
There are surprises though. If the husband dies, the woman is owed the price of her marriage contract, or the husband’s heirs must take care of her upkeep. She (or her representatives) may write obligations into the marriage contract that the husband will be required to honour. For instance, if she brings a daughter from a previous marriage with her, she can obligate the new husband to pay for the daughter’s physical support in the contract. (Ketubot 102)
Long story short, smart women can sometimes find ways to protect themselves. This is true even in a rabbinic system that isn’t designed necessarily for them. In these texts, women – and their families – both look out for one another and treat each other unfairly.
What can we draw from all this? I feel less alone when considering that expectations may have changed a bit in 2,000 years, but that many of our sometimes truly overwhelming expectations and commitments remain. Further, clever people have protected themselves whenever they can, throughout the centuries. It’s not new to look out for one’s own interests and avoid being taken advantage of by creating some safe boundaries.
Studying these texts at this point in my life offers me a level of maturity that I didn’t have the first time I went through a bad interview. More than once, I was offered a job that took a lot of skill but offered only a low wage. I remember feeling torn up about these experiences, wondering if I was worth so little. It was also a feeling of desperation. I needed a certain amount to live, and this offer wouldn’t provide it.
One privilege of being older is that women who value themselves aren’t embarrassed to ask for what they’re worth. Earning less than what we need doesn’t do us or our families any favours but, of course, in financial desperation, many women must take those jobs anyway. This is what fuels the cycle of low wage work in the first place.
We aren’t all experts in everything. Drafting a sewing pattern doesn’t make one a professional fashion designer. Finding the right document in a bunch of storage boxes is like finding a needle in a haystack, but it doesn’t make me an archivist or a research librarian. We all have our areas of true expertise. Also, just as the rabbis debated the value of one’s roles and responsibilities in marriage, we do the same. Is our work worth something? Heck, yes.
Tractate Ketubot’s messages about the value of a woman or a wife sometimes seem mercenary, but this, too, is Torah. Sometimes, being mercenary is the way to have our work be seen, valued or compensated appropriately.
Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.
Canadian Hadassah-WIZO’s S.O.S. – Starting Over Safely campaign is 27 hours long, beginning at 9 a.m. PT on Aug. 23. (photo by Mickey Noam Alon)
With the COVID-19 government shutdowns and mandatory quarantines, domestic violence has increased significantly across the globe over the past two years. The drastic increase in intimate partner and domestic abuse has been coined the “Shadow Pandemic” by the United Nations.
In Canada, one woman is killed in a violent act every two-and-a-half days. According to the provincial ministry for public safety and Statistics Canada, every year in British Columbia there are more than 60,000 physical or sexual assaults against women – almost all of them committed by men.
In Israel, the situation is just as critical. In the first year of the pandemic, 20,140 domestic violence complaints were lodged with police, an increase of 12% from the previous year. Twelve women were murdered in the first six months of this year.
In accordance with its mission, Canadian Hadassah-WIZO (CHW) is working to empower women by stepping up emergency support and services at this critical time. CHW is launching the second annual S.O.S. – Starting Over Safely summer campaign, with proceeds helping empower victims of domestic violence in Canada and Israel.
One of the most frightening things about domestic abuse is that half of the women murdered by their partners never experienced physical violence before. Domestic violence can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime. This year, through a new partnership with Michal Sela Forum, CHW is also promoting an awareness campaign to help women understand the warning signs in a relationship.
S.O.S. – Starting Over Safely 2022 has three campaign priorities, including Franny’s Fund in Canada, and WIZO programs and the Michal Sela Forum in Israel. The following campaign goals are intended to empower at-risk women and children to break the cycle of violence in Canada and Israel:
Provide help for parents and families in need of an urgent response;
Provide access to critical resources such as legal counsel and counseling services;
Provide women and their children with the basic essentials to start over safely;
Empower women and their children by providing financial help, social and personal support, employment support, and access to a network of other women in similar circumstances;
Provide women and their children with specially trained canine protection; and
Fund respite summer camp experiences for at-risk youth.
“CHW strongly believes that every human being deserves the right to achieve their full potential, while living in safety and security. You have the power to empower,” said Lisa Colt-Kotler, CHW chief executive officer.
The 2022 fundraising goal is $350,000. All funds donated will be matched three more times by a community of dedicated donors recognized as “Matching Heroes” during the 27-hour campaign, which kicks off at 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. During the crowdfunding period, each gift donated on the website chwsos.ca is quadrupled.
Not fitting in. Being misunderstood and miscategorized. These are recurring themes in Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage, edited by Loolwa Khazzoom, a Seattle writer, musician, activist and occasional contributor to the Independent.
The book was first released in the 1990s and was recently re-released.
“I wish I could say that this book is no longer as revolutionary, cutting-edge, or as needed as it was when I began compiling it in 1992, but, unfortunately, that is not the case,” writes Khazzoom, the daughter of an Iraqi Jew, in the new introduction. “Even though there have been changes – shifts in consciousness, language, and even representation – Mizrahi and Sephardi women remain overall excluded, in theory and practice, from spaces for women, Jews, Middle Easterners, people of colour, LGBTQI folk, and even Mizrahim and Sephardim. In addition, so many of the presumably inclusive conversations about us seem basic and superficial, with an undertone of it being a really big deal that these conversations exist at all.”
Khazzoom’s struggle to fit in led her to Seattle, in large part because it is home to one of the largest Sephardi communities in the United States. But even in that milieu she found herself an outsider.
“In June 2014, however, on the first sh’bath [Sabbath] after driving my U-Haul up the coast from Northern California, I was appalled by a sermon so sexist – where women were equated with ‘meat’ – that I walked out of the Sephardi synagogue, just 15 minutes after arriving,” she writes.
“I have been a hybrid all my life, forever caught between two or more worlds,” writes Caroline Smadja in her contribution to the collection. It is a state of being that is shared by many of the writers.
Yael Arami, born in Petah Tikvah to parents from Yemen, speaks of others’ perceptions of her.
“In Germany, I have had to avoid certain areas, fearing local skinheads’ reaction to my skin colour. In France, I have been verbally ridiculed and insulted for being yet another ignorant North African who does not know French,” she writes. “In California, people’s best intentions have resulted in a number of social blunders: When I left a tip in a San Francisco café, I got a courteous ‘gracias’ from the politically correct Anglo waiter. After a predominantly African-American gospel group sang at a Marin County synagogue, several members of the congregation approached me, to express their admiration for our wonderful gospel performance! It seems that wherever I go in white-majority countries, I am, in accordance with local stereotypes, seen as the generic woman of colour – Algerian in France, African-American or Puerto Rican in California.”
Rachel Wahba, an Iraqi-Egyptian Jew, calls out politically correct hypocrisy.
“Sometimes, when I bring up the oppression of Jews in Arab countries, progressive Jews get strangely uncomfortable – as if recognizing the Jewish experience under Islam would make someone racist and anti-Arab,” she writes. “During my mother’s cancer support group intake, I listened as my mother told her story of living in Baghdad and surviving the Farhud. She ended with an ironic ‘I survived the Arabs to get cancer?’ The Jewish oncology nurse was shocked that my mother was so ‘blunt.’
“Should we revise our history? Leave out the details of our oppression under Islam? Pretend my mother never saw the Shiite merchants in Karballah wash their hands after doing business with her father, because he was a ‘dirty Jew?’”
The book’s title comes from an essay by Lital Levy, “How the Camel Found Its Wings” and an Israeli film of the same name.
The metaphor involves the repair of a broken statue of a flying camel, which actually stood at the entrance to the international fairgrounds in Tel Aviv in the 1930s. In the film, the two wings of the camel become stand-ins for a dichotomy that mostly excludes Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews and yet still casts them in a negative light.
“By the end of the screening, the camel had found two new wings, and I got to thinking,” writes Levy. “I started putting my own pieces together – making my own flying camel out of the remnants of the past, borrowing missing pieces from the present, and using my imagination and willpower to try to make it all stick together. The pieces of my own American childhood, the histories that preceded it in Israel and in Iraq, and the challenges I see before me in my work are the various fragments I have been remembering and re-membering into an integral whole. I do not yet know its shape – camel, dromedary, llama, yak – but I do not care, as long as it will fly.”
The head of Hatshepsut, in Pergamon Museum, Berlin, 2018. (photo by Richard Mortell, 2018)
As we all know from the Passover story, Pharaoh was one stubborn guy. On five occasions, Moses and Aaron tried to persuade Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, but Pharaoh wouldn’t budge. In Exodus 7:13 and 7:22, Pharaoh hardens his heart in response to Moses’ pleading. Moreover, Pharaoh made his heart heavy in three other instances, as described in Exodus 8:11, 8:15 and 8:28. What would have happened if Moses and Aaron had come up against a female Pharaoh? Would the story have played out differently?
Let us begin by recalling that, if it hadn’t been for the curiosity and kindness of Pharaoh’s nameless daughter – though, in Judaism, she is later referred to as Thermuthis and even later as Bithiah – Moses would not have been rescued from his floating basket. The future leader of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt would not have lived, and the exodus would not have occurred as we know it.
There were at least six female rulers during the long period in which pharaohs ruled, and perhaps as many as 12. From what has been pieced together, these women sometimes had to disguise their female identity. Some adopted king titles, others exercised force to get their way.
Take Hatshepsut, for example, who was pharaoh of the New Kingdom, or Egyptian Empire, from circa 1479 BCE to 1458 BCE. She nominated herself and then filled the role of pharaoh by claiming her father (the earlier pharaoh) had wanted her to take over from him. Probably understanding that her position was tenuous – both by virtue of her sex and the unconventional way in which she had gained the throne – she reinvented herself. In visual art, she had herself portrayed as a male pharaoh, and ruled as such for more than 20 years. (See “The queen who would be king” at smithsonianmag.com.)
Initially depicted as a slim, graceful queen, within a few years, she changed her image to appear as a full-blown, flail-and-crook-wielding king, with the broad, bare chest of a man and the false beard typical of a male pharaoh. But Prof. Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner notes, however, in a 2015 article on toronto.com, that Hatshepsut’s statues have thin waists, “with nods to her female physique.”
Hatshepsut also took a new name, Maatkare, sometimes translated as truth (maat) is the soul (ka) of the sun god (Re). The key word here is maat, the ancient Egyptian expression for order and justice as established by the gods. Maintaining and perpetuating maat to ensure the prosperity and stability of the country required a legitimate pharaoh who could speak directly with the gods, which is something only pharaohs were said to have been able to do. By calling herself Maatkare, Hatshepsut was likely reassuring her people that they had a rightful ruler on the throne. She seemingly succeeded, as her 20-plus-year reign was a more or less peaceful time.
One important way pharaohs affirmed maat was by creating monuments, and Hatshepsut’s building projects were among the most ambitious of any pharaoh’s. She began with the erection of two 100-foot-tall obelisks at the great temple complex at Karnak. She likewise had important roads built. Still, her most ambitious project was her own memorial. At Deir el-Bahri, just across the Nile from Thebes, she erected an immense temple, used for special religious rites connected to the cult that would guarantee Hatsheput perpetual life after death. (See livescience.com/62614-hatshepsut.html.)
In life, Hatshepsut felt compelled to depict herself as a male ruler. In death, however, her true colours (pun intended) seem to surface. Exams conducted on her mummy reveal that, at the time of entombment, she was wearing black and red nail polish. Furthermore, according to sciencedaily.com, Michael Höveler-Müller, former curator of the Bonn University Egyptian Museum, reports that a filigree container bearing the queen’s name may have contained the remains of a special perfume, an incense mixture.
Nefertiti similarly hid her femininity, even though today she is the most visually reproduced ancient Egyptian female ruler. According to Prof. Kara Cooney, author of the book When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, Nefertiti cleaned up the mess that the men before her had made. She wasn’t interested in her own ambition, it seems, as she hid all evidence of having taken power, ruling alongside her husband. Yet, at the Karnak temples, there is twice as much Nefertiti artwork as there is of Akhenaten, her husband, who was king from about 1353 BCE to 1336 BCE. There are even scenes of her smiting enemies and decorating the throne with images of captives.
Despite her great power – she and her husband had pushed through a monotheistic form of pagan worship – Nefertiti disappears from all depictions after 12 years of rule. The reason for her disappearance is unknown. Some scholars believe she died, while others speculate she was elevated to the status of co-regent—equal in power to the pharaoh – and began to dress herself as a man. Other theories suggest she became known as Pharaoh Smenkhkare, ruling Egypt after her husband’s death, or that she was exiled when the worship of the deity Amen-Ra came back into vogue.
The Cleopatra clan sharply contrasts with the above two peacekeeping female pharaohs. In a December 2018 National Geographic interview about her book, Cooney explains that, when it comes to incest and violence, Cleopatra family members were no slouches. Cleopatra II (who ruled in the second century BCE) married her brother, but then they had a huge falling out and the brother/husband ended up dead. So, Cleopatra II married another brother. Her daughter, Cleopatra III, then ended up overthrowing and exiling her mother. Cleopatra III took up with her uncle, Cleopatra II’s brother, who sent Cleopatra II a package containing her own son, cut up into little bits, as a birthday present. Eventually, they all got back together for political reasons. (See nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/queens-egypt-pharaohs-nefertiti-cleopatra-book-talk.)
It’s time to return to the question posed at the beginning of this article, about whether the exodus story would have turned out differently if there had been a female pharaoh in charge.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, on myjewishlearning.com, analyzes the actions of the pharaoh Moses and Aaron encountered. She reminds us of what Rabbi Simon ben Lakish wrote about this pharaoh. In Exodus Rabbah, ben Lakish states, “Since G-d sent [the opportunity for repentance and doing the right thing] five times to him and he sent no notice, G-d then said, ‘You have stiffened your neck and hardened your heart on your own…. So it was that the heart of Pharaoh did not receive the words of G-d.’ In other words, Pharaoh sealed his own fate, for himself and his relationship with G-d.” Only at this point does G-d intervene by hardening Pharaoh’s heart, so that the plagues can end and the Hebrews can leave Egypt.
According to When Women Ruled the World author Cooney, the emotionality of female pharaohs is key. In that 2018 National Geographic interview, she says, “that ability to cry or feel someone else’s pain…. It is that emotionality that causes women to commit less violent acts, not want to wage war and be more nuanced in their decision-making. It is what pulls the hand away from the red button rather than slamming the fist down upon it. These women ruled in a way that kept the men around them safe and ensured their dynasties continued.”
There is the possibility then that, had Moses and Aaron encountered a female pharaoh, she might have concluded that all the pain and suffering from the plagues wasn’t worth it – neither for herself, personally, nor her Egyptian subjects. Perhaps without a big fuss, or at least with less of one, she would have let Moses lead the Jews out of Egypt.
Deborah Rubin Fieldsis 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.
It’s hard not to doom scroll lately, but I’ve been heartened by watching Jewish leaders take centre stage via social media. These are bright spots in a difficult time. Here are a few to Google and follow. I’ve learned a lot online this way. Perhaps you might, too.
In the world of social media and Talmud study (yes, that’s a thing!), the short social media videos of Miriam Anzovin have gotten a lot of attention. She offers TikTok, YouTube and Instagram posts and links via Twitter. These are on the Daf Yomi, the 7.5-year cycle where one studies a page of Talmud a day. Anzovin’s amazing effort offers a brief summary and analysis of some of the big rabbinic issues. It’s also a breath of fresh air in a field historically dominated by men. Anzovin is a writer and visual artist. She describes her videos as “Daf Yomi reaction videos.” These takes often include slang, curse words, and perhaps difficult interpretations for the usual Jewish text study audience.
Some Orthodox men have voiced criticism to this approach to Talmud study. I would argue that this is a defensive, unhelpful reaction. More Talmud study is good. Talmud study of any kind, is, quite simply – more. It brings more attention to Jewish text and ideas, which is a good thing both for Judaism and for intellectual analysis. Sometimes, the reaction stems from being forced to admit that there are other perspectives and ways of reading religious text. Anzovin centres women’s voices, issues and opinions, critical thinking, liberal and modern views of very old texts. Social media offers her a perfect platform and her work has taken off. It’s long past due. I’m thrilled to see her show up in my feed.
Rabbi Sandra Lawson has been one to follow for awhile. She’s a leader – an activist, a musician and a teacher. Her social media presence allows me to learn a lot. I’ve learned Torah, said Kaddish, and more. Through her anecdotes, she’s encouraged hard examination of ways in which racism is a problem in Jewish life. She’s taken on a lot of firsts in both her former role as the associate chaplain for Jewish life at Elon University and is now the first director of racial diversity, equity and inclusion at Reconstructing Judaism. She was the first African American and first openly gay African American accepted by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Her open, strong online presence embodies many things Judaism needs to see: her identity as a veteran, vegan, personal trainer, musician and wise educator pushes the boundaries of what some people think Jews or rabbis look like. For younger Jews on the web, seeing her laughing with her wife Susan, featuring her little dogs as she makes music – these are models of joyful, modern Jewish life that we need now more than ever.
What does informal Jewish education look like on Instagram? Well, many people source Jewish news specifically from A Wider Frame (@awiderframe).
Debbie, the jewelry designer behind @rootsmetals, posts deep dives into very specific historic, geographic and cultural Jewish topics. It comes complete with bibliographies. Prepare for her snarky responses to trolls (ever present online) who try to threaten her well-being.
Ashager Araro, @blackjewishmagic, is a liberal, feminist, Black Israeli. She does incredible work as an educator in person in Israel. She’s also on Instagram and Twitter, and travels to speak at Hillels and Jewish student centres in the United States. Her focus on Ethiopian Israeli history and modern Jewish life is illuminating, particularly for those who view race only through a parochial North American lens.
Some social media education targets a specific group. For example, Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll speaks out for others who aren’t able to in the Orthodox world. She tackles the issue of agunot. Agunot are women who cannot obtain a Jewish divorce from their husbands and are unable to remarry according to Jewish law. Keats-Jaskoll also works to provide modest images of women through an internationally sourced photo bank. This works to combat the erasure of women’s faces and bodies and imagery in Orthodox photos, publications and Israeli billboards. Chochmat-Nashim (Women’s Wisdom), her organization, advocates for Orthodox women, including both modern Orthodox and Haredi groups in Israel and the diaspora.
This is just a taste of what’s out there. It’s a start to diversifying your feed. You may have noticed that I started by writing about leaders I admire and, guess what? They’re all women. It’s not that I don’t admire some male leaders. There are plenty of them and some of them are fine human beings – but too many “leader lists” leave women out entirely. March 8 is International Women’s Day. It’s one thing to say we advocate for equality, and to celebrate women’s achievements on a specific day. It’s another to raise up, embrace and educate on a daily basis.
Our tradition offers us moments to celebrate women’s roles, such as the recitation of Woman of Valour (Eishet Chayil) in some homes on Shabbat. However, that’s not a standard practice in every household. Plus, it’s only one moment of one day of a week, when Jewish women are contributing 24/7.
Many of our paid leaders, rabbis and cantors, and even volunteers, such as synagogue board members, are men. It’s been “traditional” to embrace a male leadership model in some communities. However, in an era when more of our lives are both online and more egalitarian, it’s OK to stop the doom scrolling and open up one’s mind – and feed – to some new leaders. In this case, they also just happen to identify as Jewish women.
Joanne Seiffhas written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.
Livona Ellis, left, and Rebecca Margolick, right, perform together Dec. 17 and 18 at Scotiabank Dance Centre. (photo by Faviola Perez)
Next weekend, choreographers and dancers Livona Ellis and Rebecca Margolick will première their first collaboration, a duet called Fortress. The Dec. 17 and 18 performances at the Scotiabank Dance Centre also feature four solo works.
Ellis performs Unmoved, “a response to the idea of overcoming the limitations we place on ourselves,” and Margolick’s solo Bunker draws “on themes of memory and the shared history of previous generations of women.” The other two solo pieces were revived last season specifically for them: Peter Bingham’s Woman Walking (away) (1997), danced by Ellis, and Allen Kaeja’s Trace Elements (2000), performed by Margolick. (See jewishindependent.ca/albert-solos-reimagined.)
Both dancers have had the chance to perform for live audiences recently and both have been touring – New York-based Margolick internationally with her own work and locally based Ellis with Ballet BC, for audiences in Ottawa and Montreal.
“From these past two years of experiencing how quickly it can be taken away and experiencing how deeply I miss it when it’s gone, performing has a renewed sense of urgency and importance for me,” Margolick told the Independent. “I’m so excited to perform for a live audience here in Vancouver, especially because last year, when we were about to do this show for a live audience, on the day of the show, we had to switch to livestream only. A lot of energy has been built in this show over the past three years, and I’m looking forward to being able to share it live.”
While Margolick and Ellis have known each other for a long time, Fortress is their first duet together.
“Livona has always been one of the best dancers and performers I know. We trained at Arts Umbrella together all through high school, but, since then, we hadn’t danced together, until now. So much of collaboration happens outside of the studio and so, in a way, I feel like through our friendship and conversations over the past number of years, the work and ideas were already starting to form and it felt natural to transition to a studio together.
“At the time we decided to work together, I had been creating a solo titled Harbour, which was about my grandmother and my relationship to her both in life and death. One day, Livona and I had a conversation about it and she began talking about her grandmother. I was moved by this, and this conversation naturally spiraled into how we’ve started to see our mothers and grandmothers differently; how we see their influence on us; our desires to become mothers one day, being in our 30s now; how dance has changed for us, etc. The conversation was vibrant and honest and there’s a lot of history and love between us and I just asked if she wanted to create together, and she said yes.”
Ellis added, “One of the silver linings about the pandemic is that we both found ourselves in Vancouver at the same time…. I have always admired Rebecca’s work from afar but we’ve never been in the same place long enough to even begin to think about a collaboration. She was working on Harbour and we started speaking about our family and our grandmothers. This sparked the inspiration for Fortress. We were both doing a lot of reflecting during our various lockdowns and quarantines and found we were thinking a lot about who we are as artists and as women. How does our matriarchal lineage affect who we are today?
“We both feel like we are in a moment of change or transformation,” Ellis continued. “We can feel our experience settling in and grounding us in a way that allows us to move forward into the next chapter of our careers. This felt like the perfect jumping off point to create a duet.”
The pair started creating that work this past August 2021, with a residency hosted by the B.C. Movement Arts Society, rehearsing at the Athletic Hall in Sointula. “We are now working with composer Ivan Shopov from Bulgaria to develop the music, and Mimi Abrahams to develop the lighting,” said Margolick.
For Margolick, while both Bunker and Trace Elements haven’t seen any changes choreographically, “as time goes on, and as I evolve, they naturally do as well.”
“Especially for Trace Elements,” she explained, “it’s been a journey since I began working on it with Allen Kaeja. I started to learn more about Jewish history and specifically Jewish leftist and Jewish resistance history, both in the U.S. and Europe. Specifically, in Trace Elements, there is a spirit of resistance and remembrance in the work, countering the text we hear out loud, text of German propaganda and generational indifference to the history of the Holocaust. In that, I think about resistance fighters, countering the narrative that Jews went quietly towards death – they didn’t. That is a history we’re not often told of, and it’s been a part of my Jewish education to learn that history. The work is really spiritual for me and every time I perform it, I feel the spirit of those who fought and those who keep fighting and inspire me to as well.
“More recently,” she said, “I’ve been learning about Jewish women activists and fighters, especially women like Hannah Senesh, Faye Schulman, Bella Abzug, Emma Goldman, Anna Sokolow and others. I can’t really explain into words how this knowledge affects my performance, but I feel it, and it gives me a sense of grounding and inspiration.”
Margolick highlighted the Jewish Women’s Archive and Judy Batalion’s book The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos as resources.
Bunker is also steeped in research. While she premièred the full-length version of the piece (titled Bunker + Vault, which runs 35 minutes) a few weeks ago in San José, Costa Rica, the December performances will include only the first 10 minutes of the work.
“A part of my research for this piece included looking through the archives of the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls at the 92nd Street Y from the late-1800s to mid-1900s,” said Margolick. “The Clara de Hirsch Home was a place where young, poor, mostly Jewish immigrant women were housed and supported with educational resources as they found jobs and worked towards being able to support themselves. These archives were records kept by the staff, with observations and notes about the women who resided there. These observations gave me a window into the lives of the women who lived there, ranging from extreme hardship, repression, mental health issues, Jewish culture, camaraderie, acts of extreme kindness and on and on. Some of these women informed the movements, and spirit of resilience and care in the work.”
Fortress + Four Solos is presented by the Dance Centre and B.C. Movement Arts Dec. 17, 8 p.m., and Dec. 18, 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. For tickets, visit thedancecentre.ca.