Image – Jewish Independent

Novelist explores Trump era

Gary Shteyngart opens the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 8 at Rothstein Theatre. (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

“You want to know the first rule of running a billion-dollar-plus hedge fund?” Lake Success protagonist Barry Cohen recalls telling the high school boys who invited him to speak to their Investors’ Club. “Don’t sweat the metrics. We’re not really about the numbers. Do you know what we are? We are a story. Hedge funds are a story about how we’re going to make money. They’re about being smart, gaining access, associating with someone great. You. You are someone smart enough to make others feel smart. You are bringing your investors something far more elusive than a metric. You’re bringing them the story of how great you’ll be together.”

Through the character of Barry Cohen, on his journey to what would be self-discovery if he were at all self-aware, author Gary Shteyngart explores the societal circumstances in the United States that led to the election of President Donald Trump – and could well do so again.

Shteyngart opens the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on the night of Feb. 8. In conversation with CBC’s Lisa Christiansen at Rothstein Theatre, he will no doubt talk about his latest novel, Lake Success, about a hedge-fund manager who flees his wife and young child, who has recently been diagnosed with severe autism, as well as a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into his financial dealings.

Barry is stuck in a childlike state. He had a difficult father and his mother was killed in a car crash, a death Barry witnessed and which haunts him. Barry yearns for affection; he cannot regulate his emotions. He believes himself to be a self-made man and he is constantly coming across people he thinks would benefit from his mentorship, from fellow fund managers to a poor black youth he encounters on his travels to his first girlfriend, with whom he is trying to reconnect – hence, the bus trip. He is trying to find her, in the hopes of rekindling that relationship, and all the lost hope it encapsulated, while disregarding all the relationships – personal and business – he has left behind in New York City.

The main female characters in Lake Success – Barry’s wife, Seema, and his former girlfriend, Layla – are not as well-constructed as is Barry. Despite a sympathetic portrayal, it is hard to understand what anyone would see in Barry, yet he manages to attract smart and beautiful women. The novel provides some explanation as to why Seema would marry him, including family expectations. And, after meeting him for the first time, she recalls, “she went home and Googled Barry’s net worth and found it comforting. A man that rich couldn’t be stupid. Or, Seema thought now, was that the grand fallacy of 21st-century America?” So, she thought she was connecting with an intelligent and wealthy man, but how Barry continues to be an attractive prospect to women (and men) after he cowardly runs away from his responsibilities and is nearly penniless is a bit of a mystery.

For some readers, Shteyngart might come down a little too easy on the one-percent, as exemplified by Barry, Seema and the few people we meet in their realm. When the Jewish Independent asked the author why it was important to imbue the character of Barry with humanity, Shteyngart said, “Books about inhumane characters are not fun to write. Imagine an entire novel set from Trump’s point of view. Eat burger, get angry, eat burger, get angry. It’s just not 330 pages worth of material.”

That is not to say that Shteyngart is condoning the lifestyle of the ultra-rich; in fact, quite the opposite, though he does so with seeming resignation.

“Without giving too much away for the new reader,” he said, “Barry does change. Somewhat. Slightly. But the damage that has been done to the country socially and politically by Barry-like oligarchs is not going to go away, even if the next election ends the so-called Trump Era.”

While Lake Success doesn’t offer insight into how the divisions in Trump’s United States could be repaired, Shteyngart’s acerbic wit and astute observations offer an entertaining read that will hopefully elicit readers’ introspection about our own privilege and identities, how we define and carry ourselves in the world. Both Barry and Seema have a conflicted relationship with their cultural heritage; Barry his Jewish, Seema her Tamil.

As Barry holds his three-week-old son in his arms – long before the autism has been diagnosed – “he whispered through all his agnostic lapsed-Jew bullshit, ‘Please, God, just don’t do anything to him, okay? My sins are my own.’”

Later in the novel, on the bus as it enters Louisiana, Barry overhears a conversation between two white men, one an aspiring preacher who declares hatred of “any kind of ignorance,” then goes on to explain why “they nailed Jews to the cross” and that “Muhammad was killed, because he couldn’t accept Jesus Christ as permanent.” At that moment, “Barry realized that the man was now looking at him. And also that he was a Jew. He hadn’t really thought of being Jewish since he was in grade school. But he did now.”

Even later, Barry would again look at his heritage differently, considering how it could be passed on to his son. For the most part, though, Barry is perceived as a white male throughout the novel.

“Yes, it’s very strange,” said Shteyngart about being Jewish in America. “I was being interviewed by a Jewish intellectual who was trying to convince me that we weren’t white. Which is oddly enough the talking point of the neo-fascist right. In any case, the feeling that Jews were a part of the American mainstream – think Seinfeld – has been badly shaken both by the physical attacks against Jews and by the general feeling that the country is now being run as an exclusive enclave for straight white Christian males with the occasional sprinkling of Sheldon Adelson.”

Lake Success is a provocative read with some brilliant one-liners, such as the description of neighbours in their building, whom Barry hates, as being “so featureless, they could have come with the hallway,” and, when he faces difficulty becoming a writer, Barry concludes, “He was a damaged person, but not damaged enough to make a life out of it.”

The Jewish Book Festival runs to Feb. 13 at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and other venues. For the full lineup, visit jewishbookfestival.ca.

Interfaith youth unite in service

Interfaith Youth BC participants gather at Or Shalom Synagogue on Dec. 8. (photo from Pamela Evans)

Being stewards of the earth, performing acts of kindness: it’s not just Judaism that promotes these principles, and it’s for this reason that three faith groups in Metro Vancouver have brought youth together to explore shared values while participating in community service projects.

The Ismaili Centre of British Columbia, Or Shalom Synagogue and the United Church of Canada began working together in 2019 under the moniker Interfaith Youth BC to deliver programs for youth ages 11 and up. Participants learn about tenets of Islam, Judaism and Christianity while giving back to the community at large.

“You have kids, especially the ones in high school, they’re getting together and some of them have preconceived ideas of the [different faiths],” said Harriet Frost of Or Shalom Synagogue. “Sure, they get along in what they have in common in terms of their interests, ages and what they’re all going through as teenagers, but we’re addressing the elephant in the room. We’re addressing their faith traditions…. It’s an opening to see that they have a lot more in common than they might have realized before.”

Pamela Evans, a regional minister for youth and young adults for the United Church, said the guiding principle behind the collaboration is relationship building. “We make assumptions about others that aren’t based on reality,” she said. “If we’re able to build relationships, it’s less comfortable for us to do that and it affects the way we think about things. I love that sense that [the program] is an open place for curiosity and it’s grounded in this respect for one another.”

In May 2019, youth were given texts from the Torah, Qur’an and Bible that focused on stewardship and caring for the land, and had to determine which holy book each quote was from.

“The fascinating thing is no one could get it quite right because it was quite similar,” said Frost. “It’s a powerful exercise for anyone to see that.”

Later, the youth cleaned up English Bay beach in partnership with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.

photo - Some of the items Interfaith Youth BC participants assembled into care packages to distribute in Downtown Eastside on Dec. 8 — Some of the items Interfaith Youth BC participants assembled into care packages to distribute in Downtown Eastside on Dec. 8. *(photo from Pamela Evans)*

On Dec. 8, 45 young people gathered in the social hall at Or Shalom to once again dive into pieces of scripture, this time focused on acts of kindness. They assembled 150 care packages that included warm clothing, toiletries, sandwiches and snacks to distribute in the Downtown Eastside with support from the Lookout Housing and Health Society. The teens composed handwritten notes to include in each package. Several businesses donated items for the packages.

Through the nexus of study and action, “we are able to … provide a greater understanding of how faith and service are connected,” said Alina Daya, a secondary teacher at Ismaili Tariqah and Religious Education Board. “Through these events, youth are able to actually live out the guidance of their respective faiths and appreciate the similarities in values, guidance and practice within all of our traditions.”

Gabriel, one of the youth who attended the Dec. 8 event, was moved by the opportunity to make a difference. “I thought it was great how all the teens from different religious backgrounds could come together to help provide some small comforts to those less fortunate in Oppenheimer Park,” he said. “I was surprised at how similar our values were, especially of human kindness and compassion.”

Frost believes the exposure to different faiths and cultures can, in the long run, have the potential to break down political barriers. “It’s a bridge to sitting down and talking about it…. It’s a pathway towards peace and reconciliation in a broader sense,” she said. “If you develop a personal relationship, you realize the commonalities between everything.”

While the program is for youth, Evans sees it has ripple effects for adults as well. “I learn from my colleagues about things I didn’t know about and it feels like a blessing and a privilege to be a part of those conversations. I think sometimes adults are afraid to be in those conversations, or their privilege clouds their understanding. Youth don’t do that, so what would it look like if we shaped this generation of youth to think differently?”

The organizers plan to hold another event this year, a “festival of faiths,” at which they hope to invite other faith communities to participate.

Shelley Stein-Wotten is a freelance journalist and comedy writer. She has won awards for her creative non-fiction and screenwriting and enjoys writing about the arts and environmental issues. She is based on Vancouver Island.

Auschwitz 75 years on

The King David Hotel was partially obscured by a temporary security barrier as part of the preparations that were carried out in Jerusalem for the arrival of leaders from more than 45 countries for in the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, which took place at Yad Vashem this week, and marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. (photo from Ashernet)

Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. That date, Jan. 27, has been set aside annually to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Scores of officials from around the world were to descend on Jerusalem this week to attend a ceremony at Yad Vashem and a forum on the Holocaust. Expected guests include Canada’s Governor-General Julie Payette, Prince Charles, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emanuel Macron, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and a long list of royalty, heads of government and others from around the world, especially from Europe.

Among the more attention-grabbing guests is Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine. Zelensky is a particularly interesting man in a particular role at an interesting time. He will be in Jerusalem alongside Pence and other world leaders at the very moments when the U.S. president is undergoing an impeachment trial initiated as a result of a phone call with Zelensky, probably the only reason most North Americans know his name. But that is among the least remarkable things about the leader.

A political neophyte (aside from playing the Ukrainian president in a satirical TV series), Zelensky was elected on an anti-corruption platform. In advance of his visit to Israel for the commemoration events this week, he engaged in a lengthy and witty interview with the Times of Israel about his family’s history – some relatives live in Israel and he has visited and performed comedy there many times – and his reflections on Jewishness, Israel and contemporary politics.

It caused some curiosity when Zelensky was elected because he has, in his words, “Jewish blood.” It is a common term, perhaps especially in formerly Soviet societies where religion was officially negated and so identities are defined obliquely, but the phrase “Jewish blood” is unfortunate in the context of Ukrainian history.

Among the considerations facing the country at present is the complicity of its citizens in the Holocaust, including in the massacres at Babi Yar, a ravine in the capital of Kyiv, where an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 individuals were murdered during the Nazi occupation, including more than 33,000 Jews on one day in September 1941.

In 1976, Soviet officials erected a monument marking the site and the cataclysm – ignoring the Jewish particularity of the mass murder and lamenting the deaths of Soviet victims of Nazism. It is undeniably true that victims at Babi Yar also included Roma, communists, Ukrainian nationalists and prisoners of war, all of whom deserve to be commemorated and mourned. But the omission of the Jewish identities of most of the victims at the site has been a point of pain and conflict for decades.

Zelensky’s government is remedying this. Begun by civic officials and Jewish leaders and endorsed by Zelensky’s predecessors, a Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre is being constructed, with anticipated completion in 2023. The government is also undertaking a more transparent assessment of the country’s role and its citizens’ collaboration during the Second World War, outpacing most of their eastern European neighbours in addressing this dark past.

Still, some red flags remain. Zelensky claims that there is no antisemitism in Ukraine, an unequivocal statement that bewilders. It would be careless for any leader to ascribe complete innocence of bigotry to their entire citizenry, more so the leader of a country with a history like Ukraine’s.

He is, in some ways, between a rock and a hard place. While making blanket denials of Ukrainian antisemitism, he is also attempting to move his society away from the glorification of nationalist – meaning, among other things, inevitably antisemitic – historical figures. He points to the fact that he, a novice politician with “Jewish blood,” was elected to the country’s top post as evidence of tolerance in Ukrainian society. It does seem encouraging.

Also encouraging is the extensive list of world leaders arriving at Yad Vashem not only for a commemoration but for an educational forum, titled Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin has said the purpose of the meeting is “to think about how to pass on Holocaust remembrance to generations who will live in a world without survivors, and what steps we must take to ensure the safety and security of Jews, all around the world.”

Seventy-five years after that terrible epoch, the topic remains timely.

Jazz that’s personal, timely

Andrea Superstein’s next local performance is at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver on Feb. 5. Her new album is Worlds Apart. (photo from the artist)

For the last year, Andrea Superstein has been touring Canada with her new jazz album, Worlds Apart. Her next local performance will be at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver on Feb. 5.

“I discovered my voice when I was a kid. My parents enrolled me in a musical theatre program at school and I sang in a choir,” Superstein told the Independent in a recent interview. “But my family were concerned about music as a profession for me. They thought the life of an artist was uncertain, so I went on to train as a teacher. I have been teaching theatre in several Vancouver schools since I moved here from Montreal. I still teach part-time. I taught at King David [High School] for awhile. But I always had music in my life as a hobby.”

At some point, the young teacher decided to explore if music could be more for her than a hobby. In 2009, she attended a weeklong summer swing camp, a jazz camp for adults in Sorrento, B.C. “I loved it,” she said. “It gave me access to the big names on the Vancouver jazz scene. I learned so much. I decided that, for my next birthday, I would get myself a gig. I knew I could do it and I did it.”

That performance was so successful and meant so much to her, she committed to pursuing jazz as a career. She couldn’t live without it anymore.

In 2010, Superstein released her first album, comprised of her arrangements of jazz standards. The same year, her debut performance at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival earned her a nomination for a Galaxie Rising Star award. Now, 10 years later, she is a well-known Vancouver jazz vocalist.

“I still teach theatre, while I’m still a learner in jazz,” she said with a smile. “It is good to have different outlets for my creativity.”

Her latest album, Worlds Apart, is mostly her own compositions, although it includes a few of her interpretations of other songs.

“I love jazz because it is often a reinvention of something old, something known, but the musician makes it her own, as I did with the song ‘My Favourite Things’ from The Sound of Music,” said Superstein by way of example. “I’ve seen the movie many times. I performed in the musical, in the roles of Maria and Reverend Mother.” She created her own arrangement of the song for her album.

“With Worlds Apart, I wanted to deliver something personal by examining the timely issues we all face,” she added. “We simultaneously exist in conflict and in symbiosis, and the contrast fascinates me. It is not only explored in the lyrics but also reflected in the harmonic structure and the songs’ arrangements.”

For her original compositions, Superstein writes both the music and the lyrics. She loves performing, interacting with the audience. “It gives me the biggest joy,” she said.

“I love talking to people between the songs, telling them funny stories about my music and lyrics, offering some extras. I love to hear the audience laugh or applaud. It’s like building a community, creating relationships. Not many jazz performers do that, I think, and it sets me apart. Or maybe it is my theatre background showing…. Usually, my talks are not scripted. There is always an element of impromptu. I try to be open to possibilities.”

Worlds Apart includes songs in three languages: English, French and Hebrew. “I grew up in Montreal, so I’m fluent in both English and French. When we performed this album in Montreal, people loved it when I spoke to them in French,” Superstein said.

She wrote the album’s Hebrew song years ago. “When I was 17, in 1996, I spent six months on an exchange program in Israel, on a kibbutz,” she said. “I was overwhelmed by the different life there, by the people. There were many bus bombings at that time, [Yitzhak] Rabin was recently assassinated, but people didn’t exhibit fear. Just the opposite. Everyone was passionate, on fire for life, and I wrote a song about it.”

When she started working on this latest album, she remembered that song and thought it appropriate for Worlds Apart, so she revised it and recorded it.

“This album is the first I didn’t produce myself,” said Superstein. “It’s good to have someone else to listen, to make suggestions. I invited the Montreal jazz singer Elizabeth Shepherd to be my producer. I also hired a group of Montreal musicians to record the disc. They are wonderful musicians, I enjoyed working with them, and I toured with them for the past year.”

The musicians performed in jazz concert series, in small theatres and bookstores; they also gave some house concerts.

“The life of a musician is a challenging one,” said Superstein, “but I’m fueled by my love for my art.”

For more information and other concert dates, visit andreasuperstein.com.

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

Jewish films span the globe

Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit and Roberta Grossman’s documentary Who Will Write Our History were two standouts in Jewish film last year.

Last year was a busy one, but not a great one, for Jewish-related movies. There was plenty to see, but only a couple films – Jojo Rabbit and Uncut Gems – broke through the clutter to make an impact.

While Jewish characters were front and centre in high-profile TV shows – The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Kominsky Method and Broad City – in movies, they were largely relegated to glorified cameos, such as Al Pacino as old-school agent Marvin Schwars in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Alan Alda as menschy divorce attorney Bert Spitz in Marriage Story.

Jewish artists and celebrities were, as always, exceedingly popular among documentary makers. Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, televised on PBS’s American Masters, and Ask Dr. Ruth led the parade, which included less-widely-seen portraits of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love) and actor Anton Yelchin (Love, Antosha).

Picking a Top 10 was a bit of a challenge for 2019. Here are the films that left a mark.

Jojo Rabbit: The most ambitious and audacious film of the year was made by a Maori Jew from New Zealand. Taika Waititi, the director of Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, radically adapted Christine Leunens’ novel into a sharp satire of Nazi racism and groupthink that garnered the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle Award for best screenplay.

Who Will Write Our History: My only criticism of Jojo Rabbit is that it didn’t convey the depth of the Holocaust’s horror. Roberta Grossman’s artful documentary about the men and women in the Warsaw Ghetto who secretly amassed an archive of documents and diaries that would survive (if they didn’t) fills in a missing historical chapter for people of all ages. (See jewishindependent.ca/a-different-kind-of-resistance.)

Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz: The last surviving U.S. attorney from the Nuremberg trials has an impeccable memory, a spotless moral compass and enormous gravitas. This terrific doc serves as an inspiring counterpoint to Matt Tyrnauer’s slick biography of another Jewish lawyer from New York, Where’s My Roy Cohn?, who lacked an iota of integrity.

Uncut Gems: What makes Howard run? Jewelry hustler and compulsive gambler Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler, impressively manic) races around New York City to keep his increasingly angry debtors at bay. En route, Benny and Josh Safdie’s nerve-jangling drama rips the Band-Aid off black-Jewish relations.

Mike Wallace is Here: Avi Belkin examines another iconic New York Jewish character, the penetrating TV journalist who made 60 Minutes essential viewing, entirely through archival TV footage. It is one of the smartest and best documentaries of 2019.

Synonyms: Nadav Lapid’s abrasive, semi-autobiographical drama about a self-loathing young Israeli army veteran’s effort to shed his identity in Paris won the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. It is painful and revealing, with some flashes of humour.

Tel Aviv on Fire: Sameh Zoabi’s clever comedy about a Palestinian soap opera writer trying to navigate the demands of his bosses and an Israeli checkpoint commander was one of nine (!) films with Jewish themes among the official submissions for the best international film Oscar.

Transit: German director Christian Petzold transposed Jewish novelist Anna Seghers’ 1944 story of refugees trying to flee France to an enigmatic time and place that has echoes of both the past and the present.

To Dust: Shawn Snyder’s debut feature explores the grief process through a Chassidic cantor (Geza Rohrig of Son of Saul) who wrangles a community college science professor (Matthew Broderick) into his obsessive investigation into how his wife’s body will return to dust. Meanwhile, his sons worry that he’s possessed by a dybbuk.

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles: A crowd-pleasing, by-the-numbers doc about the historical (shtetl life) and literary (Sholem Aleichem) roots, creative development and enduring cross-cultural popularity of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Formulaic, but Jewish through and through.

Some of the best films of the year won’t open in North America until 2020. The Ophir Award-winner Incitement powerfully dramatizes the life of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, leading up to his irreparable act. Roman Polanski’s well-reviewed portrayal of the Dreyfus affair, An Officer and a Spy, has opened across Europe but awaits a North American distributor (a long shot given the likelihood of protests and boycotts).

Czech director Vaclav Marhoul’s harrowing adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s Second World War-set novel The Painted Bird is also on European screens, with a U.S. release likely now that it was shortlisted for best international film. In that eventuality, look for it during its brief run – and on next year’s Top 10 list.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Two new scholarships

In an effort to lighten the financial challenges presented by the growing costs of higher education, Hillel International announced in November that it is launching two annual scholarships for students attending college anywhere in the United States and Canada. The two merit-based scholarships will total $4,000 US (roughly $5,200 Cdn) each and are available to any student who identifies as Jewish. The deadline for applications is March 15.

The Handeli First-Year Scholarship will be awarded annually to graduating high school students who demonstrate a record of leadership and volunteerism and are preparing to enter a four-year college or university. Students currently on a gap-year program are also eligible to apply.

The Hillel Campus Leadership Award, meanwhile, will be presented to full-time college students in their freshmen, sophomore or junior year who exhibit exceptional leadership skills and are pursuing a degree at an accredited school.

“Thanks to the estate of a wonderful donor, David Handeli, we were able to create the two new scholarship opportunities. Four students will receive awards this year, and we’ve already received more than 200 applications since the application went live in November and more than 1,000 applications have been started. Our hope is to expand these scholarships down the road, since we will have way more demand than supply,” Etan Harmalech, Hillel International’s vice-president of marketing, told the Independent.

For both scholarships, applicants must have a grade point average (GPA) of 2.5 or above to be considered. A full list of eligibility requirements can be found on the Hillel International website, hillel.org/college-guide/hillel-scholarships/eligibility-requirements-and-faqs. The applications for the respective scholarships can be also be found on the site, at hillel.org/college-guide/hillel-scholarships.

Like their counterparts throughout North America, Jewish college students and their families have had to contend with ever-mounting educational expenses, the increase in which over the past 20 years has exceeded the rise in household income.

The daunting cost in the United States, for example, was cited in a recent report by the College Board, an American nonprofit whose goal is to expand access to higher education. The report noted that the annual tuition for a college student had increased by more than 25% in the past decade for both private and public institutions. In several states, the cost for a year’s tuition competes with average income.

The average Canadian undergraduate pays close to $7,000 a year in tuition. Surveys conducted by Macleans in 2017 and 2018, however, found that the average cost of post-secondary education – with all of its expenses, such as rent, tuition and food, included – came in at just under $20,000 per year, with the commensurate level of debt rising with each additional year of study.

In British Columbia, students are confronted with one more challenge: finding affordable lodging near campus in an overheated housing market, an obstacle that is further exacerbated by the scarcity of available units, often leading to crowded living conditions or dwellings located far from the schools students attend.

“I am happy to see that these scholarships incentivize student involvement in Jewish life on campus. Hillels are a hub for Jewish life and often act as the last gas station before students head off into the working world,” said Sam Heller, the executive director of Hillel BC. “If we don’t get to them in college, there are fewer opportunities for Jewish young adults to engage with the community in an easy way and we may not see them until they start to have families and so on.”

Founded in 1923 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Hillel is the largest international Jewish student organization, with representation at more than 550 colleges and universities around the world. In British Columbia, a Hillel presence can be found at University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, Langara College, Quest University Canada, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

All applications will be reviewed by Hillel’s scholarship committee following the March 15 deadline. The recipients of the scholarships will be chosen and announced on May 1.

Students looking for more scholarship opportunities should visit Hillel’s Jewish Scholarship Portal (hillel.org/college-guide/hillel-scholarships/jewish-scholarships), which contains information on several hundred scholarships available to Jewish students.

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

Colleagues visit Chabad UBC

Left to right: Rabbis Chaim Boyarsky, Moshe Goldman, Mordechai Silberberg, Chanoch Rosenfeld, Chalom Loeub and Zalman Zaltzman. (photo from Chabad UBC)

A delegation of rabbis who direct Chabad centres across Canada came to Vancouver last month, on Dec. 10. The purpose of the visit was to get a firsthand understanding of the day-to-day operations of the Chabad Jewish Student Centre at the University of British Columbia, which was established in 2013 by Rabbi Chalom and Esti Loeub.

The delegation included Rabbi Mordechai Silberberg, director of Chabad at University of Western Ontario; Rabbi Chanoch Rosenfeld, director of Chabad at McMaster University; Rabbi Moshe Goldman, director of Chabad of Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo; Rabbi Zalman Zaltzman, director of Chabad at Brock University; and Rabbi Chaim Boyarsky, director of the Chabad Student Network, which caters to Carleton University and University of Ottawa.

The rabbis direct their respective Chabad centres together with their wives, who are equally responsible for all of their operations. While each Chabad centre caters to the needs of its specific university students, there are some signature programs that all of them run. Weekly home-cooked Shabbat dinners free of charge, the Sinai Scholars Society, and holiday meals and services are some examples. Chabad of Western University, which was established in 1999, hosts hundreds of students every Friday night for Shabbat dinners, many of them Vancouver natives.

The rabbis began their visit at Café FortyOne, where they met with Rabbi Yitzchak Wineberg, executive director of Chabad Lubavitch of British Columbia. Wineberg briefed them on the history of Chabad Lubavitch of Western Canada and his early days in Vancouver.

The group then headed to the AMS Student Nest at UBC, where they met and had lunch with the UBC Chabad student board, and heard about some of the activities that have been taking place on campus. At the Chabad Jewish Student Centre, they met with the Loeubs to discuss the operations and offer feedback. The day concluded with dinner at the Maple Grill followed by a farbrengen (Chassidic gathering).

“It meant a lot to us to have our colleagues fly across the country to visit us,” said Rabbi Loeub. “As we are one of the more recent Chabad on Campus centres to open in Canada, it was very helpful to hear words of advice and inspiration from these veteran directors.”

For more information about the programs offered at Chabad Jewish Student Centre-Vancouver, visit chabadubc.com or call Rabbi Loeub at 778-712-7703. For information on Chabad centres on national campuses and worldwide, visit chabadoncampus.org/directory.

Sue Silverman is a volunteer with Chabad Jewish Student Centre-Vancouver.

Not just in summer

(photo from Camp Shalom)

A couple of years ago, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Camp Shalom made a new commitment to families: “When they need us, we will be there!”

Camp staff decided on this motto when they noticed that their current families needed an increased amount of care. As a result, in addition to the existing summer and mid-year school-break camps, Camp Shalom started offering care for children from Vancouver Talmud Torah, Vancouver School Board, Vancouver Hebrew Academy and Richmond Jewish Day School on professional development days. Camp Shalom offers programs for children ages 3 to 15 for an average of 40 weeks out of the year, and is accessible to children who might have mental or physical disabilities.

“We want camp to be an inclusive environment for everyone. We want all campers to feel like they can participate in any of the activities,” said Marina Cindrich, Camp Shalom assistant director.

Supporting families and treating all campers as individuals has always been important to the Camp Shalom team. They recognize that they are a steppingstone into the Jewish camping world for many children in the city.

Director Ben Horev has committed the camp to providing a personalized experience for each family – whether it’s their first time at camp or their 10th, they will receive personal attention. This includes family meetings, scholarships and any other support a family might need for their child to attend camp. In the past, Camp Shalom has partnered with families from the Tri-Cities to bring them camp. This past summer, they introduced Kaitana Shalom, an ulpan-like day camp with Hebrew-speaking counselors and all activities in Hebrew, to help Israeli families integrate into Canada.

Camp Shalom will be kicking off 2020 summer camp registration with a Family Day concert and camp event (in partnership with PJ Library), which will feature Music with Marnie, as well as activities for the whole family. The event will take place on Feb. 17, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

New this year, Camp Shalom is introducing a major change to their enrolment. They will be retiring the two-week sessions and replacing them with week-to-week registration instead. This will allow families to design a better fitting schedule for their needs.

For more information about Camp Shalom, contact Horev at 604-638-7282 or [email protected].

In the unlikely event that …

Most issues that arise at camp can be solved so that your child enjoys the experience, and perhaps learns that problems can be overcome. (photo from flickr.com)

The moment most working parents dread is when they discover, halfway through, that the summer camp they chose is not a good fit for their kid. The money is often already spent. How can this best be resolved for the child, the parent and the camp itself?

The first step is easy. If you’re relying on your child to relay all the issues, it’s possible you aren’t getting the whole story. The moment something seems to be going wrong, speak to your child’s counselor or the supervisor in charge of their daily activities. This could be something simple. Is your kid too hungry, too tired or getting too much sun? Is there a personality conflict between kids in the bunk? Sometimes it is possible to catch things before they get out of hand, such as separating the kids who are having difficulties, or to find solutions to the problems causing discomfort.

Next, keep communication lines open and keep abreast of the problems. How are the solutions working? Keep evaluating how things are going on a day-to-day basis. If it doesn’t change at all, don’t dally. Camp sessions don’t last long. It can be hard to find out exactly what’s happening to your kid if communication isn’t good.

If things don’t improve, it’s time to talk to the camp director. This can be a quick conversation in a hallway or a formal meeting. It’s important to air your concerns and see how they can be addressed. This is an opportune moment to figure out exactly what’s going on. Does the director seem concerned? Hopefully, the director will want to seek solutions, instead of explaining defensively that things should stay as they are.

In some cases, your kid might need extra help or to spend less time at camp. In these cases, a smart director can evaluate on the spot what might help. One year, I figured out which camp activity days sounded too hard for one of my kids to manage. On those days, he went to work with me while his twin was at camp. He didn’t drop out entirely, and I had a back-up plan that worked out.

A quick example here of when you know it’s time to bail. When my twins were in preschool, I signed them up for a Jewish community centre summer camp. I was surprised to find that there was little Jewish content. Further, they spent a part of every Friday watching movies at the day camp for 3- to 5-year-olds. When I asked about it, I was told that no one else saw the movies as a problem, but that they would switch the movies to the afternoons, since my children attended the morning half-day session.

What followed was a big show each week about how careful they were to adjust the movie activities – solely on my behalf. I was also told that the camp consisted of 50% non-Jews. They wouldn’t provide more Jewish flavour (blessings before meals, songs or activities) at the Jewish community centre where we were living at the time, for fear of alienating non-Jews.

The director then told me that, if I really wanted to iron this out, I would need to wait until after the summer camp season so he could have time to explain how his camp functioned. (This wasn’t the right place for us – I didn’t set up the mansplaining follow-up meeting.)

There are times when it’s immediately necessary to withdraw your kid from a camp, perhaps due to safety issues. This is a case of triage. You must find alternate childcare or summer activities and bounce back from a trying situation.

In these cases, it is unlikely that you’ll get your money back. The camp has already committed to paying its staff, buying equipment, paying rental fees and more. Further, unless they have done something illegal or egregiously wrong, it’s hard to prove that your difficulties require reimbursement.

Yes, it’s a bad feeling, but often we need to model moving on from bad experiences for our kids. It’s important to meet your child’s needs and get that kid back to enjoying the summer. If it’s possible to offer fair feedback about the camp to the director, sponsoring organization or agency, that is a worthwhile step. If another parent asks, you can explain what went wrong. But, on no account is it helpful to smear the camp through social media – avoid the lawsuit! Instead, focus on making things right with your children.

Our summers are short. Sometimes a bad camp experience is a good example of how to make the best of things. Learning to seek solutions and closure when problems arise are great life lessons to learn.

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.

Building of community

Originally, the only focus of Jewish camp was to offer Jewish children an opportunity to spend some time in a woodland environment. (photo from pxfuel.com)

Camping and camps may have been around forever. But Jewish camps, at least those in North America, have a contemporary history.

In 1893, a group called the Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society organized a camp for Jewish children in New York. These women sought to create a place to give their children a break from life in the industrialized city where they worked. The initial focus of Jewish camps was on the children of Eastern European immigrants, and there was a drive to use the camps to Americanize participants. Jews were not the only ones to take an interest in this vehicle for integration. By 1900, there were 100 camps of all kinds and, by 1915, there were more than 1,000.

Originally, the only focus was to offer Jewish children an opportunity to spend some time in a woodland environment, perhaps with access to water. Camps also offered children opportunities to interact with their peers from various backgrounds, without parental oversight, something they might not find in their home environment. Over time, Jewish camp programs expanded to include acculturation into things Jewish, along with athletics, social skills-building, the arts and related activities. Among the Jewish camps, there was the development of those that promoted a particular religious observance, or Zionism, Hebrew usage, socialism and the like. Zionist camps were given a special impetus with the worldwide effort to establish a Jewish state.

What Jewish organizers found over time was that camp experiences were crucial in binding young people to the Jewish community. The relationships forged among young people through camp have played an important role in this area. Anyone who has lived through the camping experience understands the powerful emotional connections this activity can carry with it, particularly when it occurs year after year. Many community leaders believe that sleep-away camps were (and are) an important element in the maintenance of a Jewish identity in the face of all the forces that encourage assimilation into the general population.

The summer camp has become a feature of Jewish life wherever the numbers are available to support this community service. In addition to private ventures, over time, Jewish communities have invested substantial resources into these programs and see them as an important part of Jewish communal activity. Some synagogues have camps as part of their program.

Interest in this aspect of Jewish camp has increased over time. For some parents, Jewish camps are an alternative to expensive primary schooling at Jewish educational institutions.

As a reflection of the growing appreciation of the importance of sleep-away camps in maintaining strong communities, philanthropic groups funded, in 2014, an organization in the United States to assist Jewish camps in carrying out their work. The Foundation for Jewish Camp now works with more than 180 Jewish summer camps, assisting in the training of personnel and providing other services and resources. Among other things, it assists Jewish camps in recruiting professionals, offers grants to first-time campers and helps fund upgrades for camps to accommodate participants with special needs.

An estimate published in January 2019 reported that there were 77,000 attendees at Jewish camps in the United States, and the foundation reports that there are 195 Jewish camps in North America. In Canada, there are Jewish camps in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.