CHANUKAH GREETINGS - The Canadian Jewish News

Transcription

The rabbi who wouldn’t backcheck. Fiction by Jay Teitel. Page 14
JIAS makes immigrants feel welcome by Mordechai Ben-Dat. Page 10
Examining the widespread media bias against Israel by Barbara Kay. Page 28
And more…
CHANUKAH GREETINGS
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[ H A PPY C H A N U K A H ]
T
THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS
DECEMBER 11, 2014
Miracle of the latke
George Bernstein
Special to The CJN
M
y brother and I were surgical
residents at the University of Indiana Hospital in the early 1950s
in Indianapolis, Ind. When not on call,
we would conduct Kabalat Shabbat services at one of the Jewish nursing homes.
High school kids would visit the home on
Jewish holidays.
A 16-year-old redhead named Rachel
told us that their visits seemed not really
helpful as the seniors sat in their wheelchairs oblivious to their surroundings
and our visits. In frustration, a “council
of war” was called, and this is what happened.
They came to visit the home on Chanukah and Rachel asked “who in the room
baked the best potato latkes. We would
really appreciate your recipe.”
In 1/10 of a millisecond, heads lifted
and chaos erupted as all shouted their
secret recipes.
This scenario repeated at every holi-
Heads lifted and chaos
erupted as all shouted
their secret recipes.
day. Mouth-watering recipes would fill
the room – blintzes, challah, gefilte fish,
rugalach, fruit-filled donuts, carrot tzimmus, cholent – you name it.
That Chanukah the students passed
out multi-coloured dreidels, little toy
menorahs, and red ribboned boxes of
sweets. No one ever saw smiles so wide.
I had heard that Rachel and her family
made aliyah to Israel, married a chef and
became a very popular caterer. n
George Bernstein, left, with his brother Merton Bernstein
www.pwc.com/ca
Chag Sameach
May this Festival of Lights be especially happy and healthy for you and your loved ones.
Happy Hannukah from PwC.
© 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an Ontario limited liability partnership. All rights reserved. 3359-17-11.11.2014
DECEMBER 11, 2014
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The Maccabee of Montreal
FRANK LEMCO
SPECIAL TO THE CJN
W
here did Ike Klein came from,
this defender of the Jewish
faith? Some said he was born
in Minsk. Others suggested that he immigrated from Kamenetz-Podolsk. But since
he referred to meat in Yiddish as flaish,
instead of fleish; hot as hais in lieu of heis,
and fish as fis, we decided that he was
from Lithuania (a Litvack). If truth were
told, it no longer mattered, since one winter day he became our hero. After that, we
called him the Maccabee of Montreal.
It was December 1933 and the streets
were nearly empty. It was the Great Depression and no street lamps were glowing. The city was nearly bankrupt, unable
to pay the Montreal Light, Heat and Power
Company, even for a few hours of light.
Only a few fools dared to face the ice cold
night (22 degrees below 0 F). However,
since it was the first night of Chanukah,
the Jewish Festival of Light, Ike Klein, a
diminutive mens clothes cutter, braved
the Arctic weather and wandered up and
down Jeanne Mance Street, carrying an
orange Chanukah candle to light his way.
Before it flickered out, he managed to light
another one from its wick.
Like the rabbi in his former shtetl in
Lithuania, he wanted to make sure that
all Jewish homes were celebrating, and
making the holiday relevant by lighting
menorah candles. He recognized Jewish
homes by mezuzahs on their doorposts.
When he found no light in a window, he
rang the doorbells and offered Chanukah candles for eight days. Sometimes,
he left several dreidls for young children.
However, when Jews relocated, they never
removed their mezuzahs. Thus, he often
found Christians dwelling in these homes
during his nocturnal visits. As a token of
seasonal good cheer, he presented the
neighbours several white votive candles,
so that they might fete their Christmas.
To keep himself warm, Klein chewed
on a latke left over from dinner, which
he washed down with a slug of vodka. He
thought of himself as the bearer of goodwill.
“It’s not like Yom Kippur where you sit
in synagogue and fast,” he reflected. “It’s
a time of joy, remembering how a small
Jewish group
led by a ragtag Maccabean
army, beat back,
in a stunning victory, the Hellenic
hedonists ruled by
Antiochus IV.
He thought about how
the rabbis purified the
defiled temple and illuminated a sacred flame – which
miraculously remained lighted for
eight days. Those brave Maccabees
fought for freedom and the survival of our holy traditions, and Klein
began to identify with them.
Klein was by now a little drunk
from vodka and his own importance.
Having already delivered his Chanukah
candles, and emptied the flask of vodka,
he pulled at his lower lip and thought to
himself, “Now, Ike Klein can celebrate
with Mattathias and Judah. For am I not
also a Maccabean?”
He sat down on a doorstep and in a
loud voice began to bellow Rock of Ages in
Hebrew:
Ma’oz Tzur Yeshu’ati, lekha na’eh
leshabe’ah.
Tikon beit tefilati, vesham toda
nezabe’ah.
Le’et takhin matbe’ah mitzar
hamnabe’ah.
Az egmor beshir mizmor
Chanukat hamizbe’ah. ■
Happy Chanukah!
Wishing you and yours
a bright and beautiful
festival of lights.
ey.com/ca
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The flames leaped
higher and higher
Curt Leviant
Schwartz Levitsky Feldman LLP
T
arry Samson took the Chanukah
lamp out of the cabinet and stood
resolutely in the middle of the
living room. “Tonight I’m going to light
the candles by the front window,” he announced to his wife.
He watched his wife’s eyes move away
from her book and up to his face. “You’ve
always lit them in the kitchen,” she said.
“Not always. You remember in New York
. . .”
“These past four years have not been
New York.”
Harry paced the living room floor. “For
once I don’t want to hide it. So this is a
hick town in the south. So what! The lights
are supposed to be seen for many reasons. As a reminder to a passing stranger.
For everyone to see how the Maccabeans
overcame Syrian-Greek tyranny more than
2,000 years ago.”
His wife Vera, understood. Still, she said,
“But we’re the only Jews here. Who will you
inspire?”
Harry curled his fingers around the lamp.
“No more hiding. This is a holiday of lights.
A light in the darkness is no light at all.”
They looked at each other in silence, absorbing the words and feeling the loneliness of four years of isolation. In the small
town in Georgia, even the people’s names
were so Anglo-Saxon that you couldn’t
even have the pleasure of conjecture –
maybe . . . maybe he’s a Jew. Scattered in
the nearby towns were a few Jewish families, but not nearly enough to shape a
community.
So the Samson home became synagogue
and house of study combined. But a house
of meeting it could never be. On the horizon stood the day when Harry and Vera
would be able to leave town, when Harry
would have a teaching job in the big city.
There they wouldn’t be island-dwellers.
There they would participate once more
in communal life. Still, Harry persuaded
himself that the gifts of the spirit were
everywhere.
Their neighbours were silent, distant
people. Like Fire Chief Brown across the
street, estranged not only from the Samsons but from his other neighbours as
well. A silent, brooding man looking as if
some kind of guilt rode perpetually on his
shoulders. Never close to anyone, he just
did his job. Harry’s other neighbours, too,
were polite but distant friends.
And so
the Samsons’s companionship was centred around the faculty of his school, from
whom they sustained their social and intellectual nourishment.
It was the first night of Chanukah. As on
each holiday, their aloneness was accentuated by the starkness of no one sharing
their joy. Harry carried the candle-holder
and placed it on the window sill facing the
street. He put the first candle into position
and lit it with the shamash candle. He sang
the blessings sweetly, looking at his wife.
Her eyes were focused on the flame, as if
seeking out its mystery.
Harry’s hand shook as he passed the
flame to the candle. He waited anxiously
for the next day.
Business on the street as usual. He taught
his classes in basic chemistry; his wife ran
their little arts and crafts shop; the world
remained a tiny norm. That evening Harry
Samson lit the second candle. Still the
quiver of the flame reflected in his mind.
Soon someone would inquire. He was impatient for someone to ask – “Why?”
The next day a question was asked.
Fire Chief Brown stopped him on the
street, saying, “Excuse me, Mr. Samson,
but, uh . . . can you tell me where you buy
those little candles? The ones . . . you were
burning in your window last night.”
Harry expected him to ask, “Why?”
Instead he asked “Where?” But Harry
was ready with an answer.
“You can’t get them here.” Harry
forced a laugh.“You get them 10
miles out in the supermarket.
You know. A few Jewish families are scattered around
there.” Harry watched
Brown’s face. His lips
didn’t form the word
Why. In that case, Harry
would ask him, “Why
did you want to know,
Mr. Brown?”
“Thought I would
test them for . . . fire
hazard, quick burning quality, and . . . we
can’t be too careful,
you know.”
They both laughed,
Harry again exploding
the artificial smile into
a laugh. “Yes, you can get
them at the supermarket,”
he repeated foolishly.
When he told his wife the
story, she laughed and said,
“Maybe he’s Jewish.” Harry joined in
with the joke. “Maybe I’m a fire chief.”
But underneath his tongue the words were
forming: What will he really do with them?
THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS DECEMBER 11, 2014
Two days later he saw some men talking
on the street. They were huddled together
strangely. He couldn’t hear what they were
saying and his sensitive mood imagined
the worst.
“He packs a powerful wallop,” said one
man, raising his fist. But then he heard,
“That guy is some boxer.”
He walked by the firehouse, purposely,
wanting to meet Mr. Brown, wanting to
bring the situation to its inevitable conclusion. He saw him standing there, an
intense look on his round face, the lips
puffed out, the eyes half closed. He was
about to say something. Harry signalled
This is a holiday of
lights. A light in the
darkness is no light at
all.
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his attention by lifting his head upwards
in a half nod.
He’ll tell me about the fire hazard. And
I’ll have to remove the candles from the
window. But Mr. Brown was silent. He just
looked at Harry, made another motion, as
if to walk toward him, but then walked
slowly back into the shaded firehouse, his
hands in his pockets.
The continued silence of the town hung
heavily like a curtain in Harry’s mind. By
the fourth night he was ready to remove
the candles from the window. All he needed was an official excuse. His zeal had
done nothing but set him on edge. His wife
noticed it. And maybe she was right. All
this would have been fine in a Jewish community. But here? Here it was just stubbornness. His wife’s thoughts were now,
somehow and mysteriously, his own. With
each lit candle his head buzzed with vague
fears. Something had to come. It was slowly building up. He knew it. He breathed it
in the air of the streets. He saw it in the
looks of the people’s eyes. He heard it in
the rumblings of daily life.
As soon as he finished lighting the fourth
night’s candles he resolved, “This is the
last night.” As if confirming his decision,
the phone rang. There it is, he thought. He
stood watching the candles as his wife answered the phone. The little flames leaped
higher and higher and disappeared into
the air. Yet more flames always sprang up
from the wick. Thus our people against
the tyrants, he thought. He let his eyes
relax, filling them with light, filling his
whole being with the warmth of the light.
“It’s for you, Harry.” His heart bounced
with the leaping flames.
“This is Fire Chief Brown,” he heard the
voice say. Get those candles off the window, he thought. But instead a soft voice
said, “Do those candles have to burn in the
window?”
Very subtle, thought Harry. “How do you
mean?” Harry’s voice was not his own. The
cords in his throat tightened as he spoke.
The sound was in a higher, odder pitch.
He swallowed.
Mr. Brown continued. “Is it part of the
religious ceremony to do that?”
Come out with it, Harry thought, and tell.
Don’t play with me. Don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me now. “Let me explain the
significance of the candles, Mr. Brown . . .”
Harry was cut short. “If you don’t mind,
just tell me, is it better if they burn in view?”
“Yes,” Harry’s thoughts exploded. “It is
better if they are seen, if they communicate their message to the others . . .”
“Good. That’s all I wanted to know. The
message was communicated. Thank you.”
And click – the phone was dead. Harry
looked at the mouthpiece for a while and
set it back.
“What’s the matter, Harry?” his wife
asked. She stretched her hand out to him.
He took her warm hand into his and felt
his fingers trembling against hers.
Continued on next page
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B6
Flickering flames in the
darkness
Continued from the previous page
The nervousness leaped with the touch
into her. “What is it? What did he say?”
the edge of her lips quivered. “You’re all
upset.”
“I don’t understand, Vera. He said, ‘The
message was communicated.’ ”
“Harry,” Vera said softly. “Since you started this candle lighting in the window you
haven’t been the same. You worry about
every word, every sound, every flame.
Either go back to the privacy of the kitchen, or accept your own move.”
Harry knew his wife was right, but still
he felt that his wife was deserting him, by
asking about it in the open, by verbalizing
what had previously been unsaid. Gloomily he looked at the candles and at the street
below, scanning the houses across the
street mechanically. His mind was playing
tricks again. Two of his four candles had
gone out already. In the window opposite
his, symbolically enough in Mr. Brown’s
window, the reflection of his Chanukah
lights were shining. He looked at their re-
flection. Suddenly he called his wife.
“Come quickly. I’m having a vision.”
Vera came running, afraid something
was wrong with him.
“Look. Look across the street. In Mr.
Brown’s window.”
She held her breath. They couldn’t believe it. A living reflection.
Strangely, a third candle appeared to be
shining in Mr. Brown’s window, while only
two remained in Harry’s window.
“He’s kindling Chanukah lights,” Harry
shouted. “Vera, do you know what that
means? Chanukah lights by Mr. Brown?”
Across the street, the lit candle illuminated Mr. Brown’s shadowy, brooding features, and the flickering flames cast a glow
on his face as he lit the fourth candle.
“A light from the darkness,” Vera whispered. “Another miracle.” n
Curt Leviant is he author of seven critically acclaimed novels. His most recent
book is the short story collection, Zix Zexy
Ztories.
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
SeeJN | Percussive Chanukah
David Bale photo
A session combining rhythm and prayer at The Leo
Baeck Day School – led by Dean of Jewish Living,
Rabbi Noam Katz (at left) – turned into a celebration
of Chanukah, when the students discovered what
can be done with eight drums plus a “shamash.”
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My maternal grandfather’s miracle
Ruth Frankel-Graner
Special to The CJN
M
y precious mother (of blessed
memory ) often related to me the
unhappy circumstances of her
wedding, especially as each of her three
daughters was married in a rather splendid fashion in white satin and lace, with
black limousines, and bouquets cascading
snowy baby’s breath and purple orchids.
My mother was the oldest daughter, and
the first of four daughters to wed. She was
married in 1925, in the living room of her
parents’ home. It was a very simple ceremony. No guests or flowers, no special
gown, not even a cake.
“Immediately afterwards,” my mother
said, “I went back to work.” She told me
that something horrible had happened
before this event, and her father attended
the marriage ceremony in his bathrobe
and pyjamas. Dressing was painful. In the
months just before this, he had been badly
burned, and was still recovering.
How had this accident happened? The
family stories conflict: his warehouse
had been burnt by a bitter employee, or,
The wedding party of Ankel Eisikovich’s second daughter Sade.
in a different scenario, my grandfather,
perhaps worrying about something else,
distracted, or maybe just unaware, struck
a match to check the contents of his
automobile’s gas tank. Whatever the rea-
We wish all our families, friends & clients
a joyous Chanukah.
son, there was a huge explosion, and my
grandfather was badly burnt. He lay on
the pavement, scorched and blackened on
most of his body and face. That is when a
miracle occurred!
What my mother did not divulge to me,
and perhaps she did not know, was something the third daughter, my Aunt Mary
told me in the last years of her life. (I must
add that my aunt was a down-to-earth
person, logical and pragmatic, not given
to mysticism or flights of fancy.)
My aunt said her father told her that
after the explosion he was so close to
dying that the Angel of Death, brandishing his terrible scythe, was swiftly approaching. My grandfather’s father, buried for many years before that, appeared
at that moment. My great-grandfather
was swinging a huge, glistening axe.
He placed himself directly between my
grandfather and the Angel of Death. In
desperate defence of his son, he swung
the axe around and around, back and
forth in an all-encompassing arc, fending off the Grim Reaper, until finally, unable to seize my grandfather’s life, Death
retreated.
My grandfather recovered, and lived a
good and long life, long enough to see all
of his nine children married, and to enjoy
the many, many children of these marriages. n
We would like to wish
our clients and friends a
Happy and Healthy Chanukah!
39
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Best Wishes For
A Happy Chanukah
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A
Very
Happy Chanukah
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and Family
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
Menorahs of Israel shed light on Jewish
Deborah Fineblum Schabb
JNS.org
A
s winter arrives and the days grow
shorter, outdoor lighting is needed
more during the Chanukah season
than at any other time of year. This need
is taken particularly seriously in Israel,
where outdoor menorahs make a nocturnal stroll through city streets a treat for the
eyes – and for the spirit.
The outdoor Chanukah menorah was
one Israeli tradition that painters Israel
Hershberg and Yael Scalia Hershberg
embraced when they made aliyah from
Baltimore more than three decades ago.
Each year, they place nine shot glasses
filled with olive oil (and each topped with
a wick) in a simple box fashioned of brass
and tin. The box has glass windows and
little chimneys.
“It’s something of a Yerushalmi (Jerusalemite) artifact since it seems they don’t make
them anymore,” Yael says of the box, which
was purchased from a craftsman in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Mea Shearim. “It’s
very old world, and in its authenticity and its
simplicity it has real charm.”
The term menorah itself can be cause
for confusion, even in Israel. The one
used thousands of years ago in the Jewish
Temple, which was adopted as a symbol
of the nascent state of Israel, has seven
branches. But the Chanukah menorah
has nine branches – one for each day the
scarce oil burned in the reclaimed temple more than 2,000 years ago, as well as
a shamash to light the rest of the candles
and stand guard over them as they burn.
In an effort to stem the confusion, in the
late 1800s, Eliezer ben Yehuda, the father
of the modern Hebrew language, coined
the term chanukiyah. But not all chanukiyahs are outdoor affairs. Many of the 70plus chanukiyahs in the home of Tel Aviv
collector Bill Gross and his wife Lisa are
just too gorgeous – and too valuable – to
expose to the elements.
Gross, however, is intent on “seeing
them returned to their original use,”
which is why he uses a different chanukiyah each year. The rotation includes the
1950 Israeli specimen he used growing
up in Minneapolis. “I believe that as soon
as you look at them as art objects, it rips
them up by their roots. These are objects
made for performing a mitzvah and it’s
only right to let them do that,” he says.
Old chanukiyahs also serve as a reminder of those years when the act of
lighting them was a risky undertaking.
One chanukiyah, dating back to preWorld War II times, is on display in the
Holocaust History Museum at Jerusalem’s
Yad Vashem, where visitors can find it in
the section dealing with the Nazi rise to
power. Every year, members of the family
Yael Scalia Hershberg’s
Chanukah menorah, in
which nine shot glasses
filled with olive oil (and
each topped with a wick)
are placed in a simple box
fashioned of brass and tin.
The box was purchased
from a craftsman in the
Jerusalem neighbourhood
of Mea Shearim.
Yael Scalia Hershberg photo
I’ll say the prayers
and you say ‘Amen’
who donated it – the Mansbachs – take it
home to Haifa to light it for the holiday.
“The thousands of personal items in Yad
Vashem’s collections help us connect with
the experience of Jewish men, women,
and children during the Shoah,” says Yad
Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev.
Member of Knesset Rabbi Dov Lipman
(Yesh Atid) and his family also use a chanukiyah that reminds them of this dark
time in Jewish history – a replica of one
constructed of nails in a concentration
camp. “It was a gift for my bar mitzvah,”
says Rabbi Lipman, a Maryland native
who now lives in Beit Shemesh.
“As a people, we have always used any
means at our disposal to survive and to
stay strong, and every year when we light
this chanukiyah we and our children are
reminded of that.”
But not all menorahs have survived
tough times. Many, like the one Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky
used in a Soviet internment camp 34
years ago, remain only in the memory of
those touched by their light. Back in 1980,
Sharansky was one of a group of political
prisoners and the only Jew. “But when I
told them Chanukah was coming, everyone was very enthusiastic,” he says.
T
People’s past, present, future
These objects are for
performing a mitzvah
and it’s only right to
let them do that.
One friend who worked in the wood
shop fashioned a crude menorah of
pressed wood from a box for Sharansky.
He lit it in the barracks on the first night
of Chanukah and on several subsequent
nights, until a KGB collaborator turned
him in and the menorah was confiscated. “The head of the camp called me in
and told me, ‘This is not a synagogue;
you were brought here for punishment,
not for praying,’” recalls Sharansky, who
promptly embarked on a hunger strike.
The hunger strike made the camp
leaders nervous because a commission
from Moscow was expected to arrive
shortly. On the last night of Chanukah,
Sharansky told the head of the camp,
“You want me to stop the hunger strike?
You give me back my menorah and bring
me nine candles. I’ll say the prayers and
you say, ‘Amen.’”
Which is exactly what happened. “I
prayed the day would come when we will
celebrate our freedom in Jerusalem and
that all our enemies will hear our prayer
and say, ‘Amen,’” says Sharansky. Since
the prayer was in Hebrew, the head of
the camp didn’t understand a word but
just kept saying “Amen.”
The light from all the menorahs
throughout time continues to shine
down through Jewish history, says Rabbi
Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi in charge
of the Western Wall and other Israeli
holy sites. Every year, after lighting the
official Western Wall chanukiyah, Rabbi
Rabinowitz returns home to light the
small silver one his in-laws gave him for
his wedding 25 years ago. “A little bit of
light takes away all the darkness,” the
rabbi says through a translator. “And this
year, more than ever, we need the light.
As a people we need to be united and
together, with no fighting or disagreement. We Jews need to connect through
this light to the spirit of Chanukah and
to each other.”
Rabbi Rabinowitz adds, “At a time of so
much darkness, we need to also connect
to the power of our Jewish tradition. The
light has the power to bring us back to it
and to unify us.”
The chanukiyah at the home of Rabbi
Yehoshua Fass, co-founder and executive director of the Nefesh B’Nefesh
aliyah agency, came with his wife Batsheva’s grandfather all the way to America from Germany, where he purchased
it after the war. “He had lost everything
but gathered whatever he could to buy
a semblance of Judaism which for him
was a sign of rebuilding and hope,” says
Rabbi Fass. “And now that it has been
passed down to the fourth generation in
our family, it also reminds us that Jewish
history is still being written and Israel is
the homeland for tomorrow’s generations of our people.”
“Each night when we add a candle and
the light grows steadily stronger, we realize once again the importance of being
here in Israel, the only place in the world
that is truly ours,” Rabbi Fass adds. “Like
the miracle of Chanukah, this mini miracle of our ability to return home to Israel is something that we want to publicize to the entire Jewish world.” n
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DECEMBER 11, 2014
JIAS Toronto staff skilled and caring
Lyn and Mordechai Ben-Dat
Special to The CJN
I
f our forebears, Avram and Sarai, had
contacted the offices of Jewish Immigrant Aid Services Toronto (JIAS Toronto) before they set out from Charan on their
epochal journey to Canaan, they might
have felt more welcomed and less strange
once they landed in that unfamiliar land.
Or if Moses had co-ordinated with JIAS Toronto some of the myriad details of the upcoming 40-year people-building adventure
before leaving Egypt, there would undoubtedly have been less grumbling against him
and his leadership. Such are the skills and
the compassion of the JIAS staff.
“We didn’t have any family here. We
didn’t even know anyone here,” Beti
Poyastro explained over tea at her pleasant townhome in North York. But, fortunately, there was JIAS Toronto. “JIAS guided
us in every aspect of our immigration,”
she emphasized.
“The very first place we went to after we
arrived in Toronto was the JIAS Toronto
office. The very first people we met after
Being Jewish is a large
part of who I am
From left, Izak, Igal, Eran and Beti Poyastro
we arrived were JIAS staff,” Yury Kaganovskiy told us in a conversation at Earl Bales
Park.
We recently met with Beti and Izak
Poyastro and with Olga and Yury Kaganovskiy to find out how JIAS Toronto aided
their immigration and settlement.
Beti and Izak Poyastro, from Istanbul,
Turkey, are still settling into their new
home in their new country. They have
been here, together, for about a year now.
Before that, there was much travelling
back and forth to Turkey until Beti settled
in Canada first, arriving in 2012 with her
two young boys, while Izak stayed back in
Istanbul, working, to maintain his family.
Those were hard times.
Olga and Yury Kaganovskiy have been in
Toronto for six years. They left their city,
Moscow, which had become increasingly
violent because they wanted to change
their lives and seek a deeper, personal fulfilment. They arrived at Toronto Pearson
International Airport with two suitcases
and nothing more. Both of their adult sons
stayed behind at the time; the younger has
since joined them.
Share the gelt
Have a bright and happy Hanukkah
3853-CJN-Hanukkah-Ad-FINAL.indd 1
2014-11-13 12:06 PM
Far from the cities of their birth, from
their families, from their homes and from
the friends with whom they shared language, customs, experiences and memories, the Poyastros and the Kaganovskiys
now find themselves in an entirely new
and different land.
We who live in the land of our birth often
forget the courage, determination and
commitment that is required to leave the
familiar surroundings of one’s native land,
to move to an unfamiliar country and try
to rebuild one’s life entirely anew. To be
sure, the Poyastros and Kaganovskiys did
not come to Canada as refugees fleeing
B11
T
from persecution or out of fear for their
lives. They came on the wings of dreams
and aspirations, as newcomers, hoping to
find a better way of life and the opportunity to live in freedom, safety and dignity,
with the support of friends yet to be made.
There was the possibility of opportunities
for their families and a feeling of belonging fully to a new community. The Istanbul
of Beti and Izak’s childhood, more than
40 years ago, was a secular, democratic
society, governed by the rule of law. This
open atmosphere in which they grew had
an impact on their personalities. Beti and
Izak have a refined, European air about
them. They each speak a number of languages, are confident and self-possessed.
They were raised in culturally rich Jewish
homes that borrowed from their Sephardi
roots and mingled with the many cultural,
linguistic, culinary and other influences
of the Ottoman world. Ladino was one of
the languages spoken by Beti’s grandparents, both of whom were born in Turkey.
Izak’s paternal grandfather came from
Egypt where Jewish life was also expressed
openly with pride alongside the religions
of ones’ neighbours.
As a result, Beti and Izak have always
been “sensitive to their Jewish identity”
and engaged with their Judaism. “Being
Jewish is a large part of who I am,” Beti
told us, emphasizing the point with references to her membership in L’union
des étudiants Juifs de France and to her
work for the Judaica radio program in
Strasbourg, while she was studying law
in France. For his part, Izak pointed out
that he had learned his Hebrew language
reading skills and developed lifelong
friendships at Machzikei Hatorah, in Istanbul. Their social milieu was a Jewish
one, though not exclusively so.
Olga and Yury, by contrast, were born
more than 50 years ago in a tightly controlled totalitarian society. They are both
earnest and serious individuals who
measure their words carefully before
speaking them. The early period of their
lives offered limited opportunities and
fewer choices regarding the professional
and personal paths they could pursue.
Though educated and sophisticated, they
knew very little about the Jewish customs
and traditions of their ancestors. Yury’s
paternal grandfather was the last family
member who had tried to instil in him
any sense, let alone any knowledge, of his
Jewishness. The Soviet system attempted
to ensure that Yury’s grandfather would be
his last religious instructor.
But the seeds of Jewish self-awareness
planted in Yury by his grandfather could
not be entirely uprooted. Since coming to
Canada, Yury has explored and has begun
to nurture his latent Judaism. He attends
synagogue regularly. “Now I put on tfillin
each day,” Yury told us with a broad smile.
Yury and Olga first contacted JIAS Toronto from Moscow. “We arrived at Toronto
Pearson Airport by ourselves. We stopped
and looked at each other. We knew no one.
In the entire North American continent,
we had only each other. We had no bank.
No doctor. We had no references. No credit rating. We were entirely alone. But JIAS
Toronto helped us. Each day, for the next
two weeks, we were at their offices. They
co-ordinated every step,” Yury and Olga
told us in their careful, deliberate manner.
For the Poyastros, the openness of life
in Istanbul had slowly eroded since a regime change in 2003. The changed atmosphere also resulted in negative sentiment
against Israel. “Jewish identity [in public] is hidden. You don’t feel comfortable
wearing a kippah outside. Everything Jewish is kept under the radar,” the Poyastros
told us. “And that is why,” they continued,
“you move to a country where you can express yourselves as Jewish people.”
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Community
provides aid
to fellow
Jews
Olga and Yury Kaganovskiy
Continued from the previous page
And so the Poyastros quickly explored
the Jewish aspects of life in Toronto and
how they might take part in it. “JIAS
staff explained the Jewish education
system to us,” Beti and Izak told us,
“and they connected us with schools.”
The young couple has found a synagogue where they are comfortable and
are determined to be “involved in the
Jewish life” of their newly chosen community.
We all know however, that the key to
successfully overcoming the personal
and familial upheavals that erupt from
immigration to a new land is finding
employment and providing a reasonable livelihood for one’s family.
Although Beti had a successful legal
practice in Istanbul, she does not practise law here. Undaunted, on the advice
and at the initiative of JIAS Toronto
staff, Beti took part in career-oriented
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viewed again, persevered and has now
found employment.
Izak studied economics at Istanbul
University, and has worked successfully as a career businessman. He deferred
May Your Life Be Filled With Light
his permanent arrival to Toronto until
he was able to secure meaningful, fulltime employment here. Both are happy
in their professional situations.
Yury studied at the Moscow Linguistic University and worked as an English
teacher in Moscow. Olga’s training was
with computers and she worked as an
electronic archives manager.
Finding work in Toronto for the
Kaganovskiys has been a more difficult process but ultimately they were
also successful due to the commitment
to them by the JIAS staff. “JIAS helped
us look for work. They helped with
our resumés, with interviews, sending
Allan Garber, CPA, CA, LPA, CPA (Illinois), TEP
us on courses and attending learning
Stephen Chesney, FCPA, FCA
programs,” Yury said. A JIAS ToronJack Hauer, CPA, CA
to scholarship, funded by community
donors, enabled him to take the necessary certification program to teach
1 West Pearce Street, Suite 700, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 3K3
here.
Tel: (905) 764-0404 • Fax: (905) 764-0320
With his superb language skills, Yury
www.PGCLLP.com
found a job as an instructor in one of
the two JIAS Toronto Language In-
Happy Chanukah
T
struction for Newcomers to Canada
(LINC) schools funded by the federal government. As “pay back” to the
organization that helped them, Yury
volunteered for several years with JIAS
Toronto’s Conversation Café program.
Olga volunteers at a community centre
for seniors. She also works part time at
a synagogue.
One of the many imperatives taught
to us by Jewish history is that we must
look after each other. We must care
for each other. We must not be indifferent to each other. That is surely at
least part of the meaning of one of the
best known maxims propagated by our
ancient sages, Kol Yisrael arevim zeh
le’zeh – All of Israel is responsible one
for the other.
As the testimonies of Beti and Izak,
Olga and Yury make clear, JIAS Toronto
is a living embodiment of that maxim.
Since the 1920s, the Canadian Jewish
community has organized itself, generation after generation, to provide aid
to fellow Jews as they travelled or fled,
seeking a better home for themselves
and their children.
At the annual meeting of the JIAS Toronto board in January 1942, one of its
members gave modern meaning to that
ancient rabbinic catchphrase:
“There is not a single Jew in the world
who does not know the importance
and the need of Jewish emigration and
immigration agencies. … and no words
can fully describe or appraise their importance.”
Perhaps Beti and Izak Poyastro and
Olga and Yury Kaganovskiy can more
ably provide us with some words to describe JIAS Toronto’s significance.
“JIAS is very important. We are people
who have really benefited from JIAS –
socially and professionally. They do
an amazing job. They help to make us
comfortable in our new country. JIAS
Toronto is part of our lives, actually,”
Beti and Izak told us.
“JIAS Toronto has been our second
home,” Yury announced with the formality that characterizes his speech.
And then Olga added, brushing away
the tears that had formed in her eyes:
“We are on the way, thank you to Yury
and to JIAS Toronto.” n
T
B13
Meet Jerusalem’s
Bagel Man – from Montreal
Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod
Special to The CJN
M
ontrealers are passionate about
their bagels no matter where
they go, as Shmarya and Lainie
Richler have discovered in their struggle
to bring Montreal’s finest to their little café
on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street.
Unlikely? Perhaps. Shmarya worked for
more than 30 years in high-tech, while
Lainie is a fitness instructor and manager
of a fitness centre. But their kids always
joked that someday they’d retire and run
a café. Now, with Muffin Boutique (16 Ben
Yehuda St., 02-500-0041, www.facebook.
com/richlerbakery), they’re making that
dream come true.
“We thought, ‘What’s the worst that can
happen? We’ll lose a certain amount of
money,’” Lainie says.
Compared with leaving the rat race, it
was a no-brainer, Shmarya says. “Now,
when Sunday rolls around, I’m actually
looking forward to going in to work.”
Opening in July 2014 during Operation
Protective Edge, the Richlers, who made
aliyah from Montreal in 1995, were undaunted, despite Red Alert sirens in Jerusalem. They collected donations and sent
bagels to soldiers on the front lines.
Now, Muffin Boutique must battle the
growing number of five-shekel fixed-price
coffee shops throughout the pedestrian
shopping area. Consumer expectations
have been tarnished, seeing coffee, sandwiches and desserts, all for a set five shekels (about $1.46 Cdn).
“People who appreciate quality come
to us,” Shmarya says. “It’s growing all the
time – we have a steady stream of loyal
customers.”
One customer tasted the fixed-price coffee next door and came straight to Muffin
Boutique.“He said, ‘It’s not coffee.’”
When they decided to open a bakery,
the Richlers – he’s a first cousin of the late
writer Mordecai Richler, named after their
mutual grandfather – made themselves
popular in their Efrat neighbourhood by
calling on friends and family to taste their
experimental offerings.
With Lainie’s fitness background and
interest in vegan food, she created lots
of healthy choices, but doesn’t disdain
carbs. While Muffin Boutique does offer
soups, salads and other delicious alternatives, she says ultimately, “Jews like a good
bagel.”
But where most bagel shops offer a range
of other toppings alongside a single whole
wheat offering, “we make whole wheat in
every variety. Why not?” Lainie says.
At Muffin Boutique, healthy tastes great:
Happy Chanukah!
Shmarya and Lainie Richler
Lainie’s vegan muffins earned her a writeup in the Jerusalem Vegan Times.
But if muffins are Lainie’s department,
Shmarya is all about the bagels. He discovered a few good reasons nobody was
baking Montreal bagels in Israel before he
came along.
For one thing, the flour is different – lower in protein (or “softer”) than Canadian
flour. But while some insist that the secret
is in Montreal’s city water supply, Shmarya
chose two factors to make his bagels as
authentic as possible: malt and a pre-baking boil in honey water.
Malt wasn’t easy to come by. One brand
had a kosher symbol that wasn’t recognized by the Mehadrin Yerushalayim organization, and he wanted Muffin Boutique to appeal to the broadest range of
visitors. He initially used an Israeli beer
for its malty flavour, but finally found certified malt.
The malt, Shmarya says, also gives darker products their distinctive colour. “Some
places use caramel colour,” he says, while
Muffin Boutique avoids all hydrogenated
fats, food colourings and preservatives.
With malt and flour, Shmarya was almost ready to bake. But, drawing on his
project management background, he laid
the groundwork carefully. First, he took a
business course and consulted with Israeli
small-business organization MATI. Then,
back in North America, he toured Gotta
Getta Bagel in New York, waking up at four
in the morning to see how it was done.
Finally, he flew in Karl Wolfsgajer of
Mount Royal Bagels in North Vancouver
for a week to help refine his recipe. Even
without a real wood-burning stove, Shmarya seems satisfied – and so do his customers.
Just the day before he spoke to The CJN,
Shmarya says, two former Montrealers
stopped by for bagels. One of them told
him, “I closed my eyes, I took a bite, and I
was back in Montreal.” n
Wishing all the best to our Community Members
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DECEMBER 11, 2014
The rabbi who
wouldn’t backcheck
A story by Jay Teitel
T
he worst rabbi I ever met – Rabbi
Jeffery Kalbfleisch – was the rabbi
who was originally scheduled to
officiate at the bat mitzvah of my oldest
daughter, Samantha, but who didn’t quite
make it to the event. By then he was gone
from the local rabbinical scene, and not
willingly, although he made a point of
telling anyone who asked that the divorce
was actually his idea. In this, to be fair, he
wasn’t completely wrong.
The synagogue at which Rabbi Kalbfleisch officiated during his short stint
was the one my family considered ours
at the time, or as close to “ours” as Jews
of our stripe could get: a low-slung modernist structure on upper Leslie Street in
Toronto, a couple of blocks from the city’s
northernmost boundary. It was called
Shaarei Olam – in English the “Gates of
the Universe” – but it looked less like
the gates of anything than an elongated World War II pillbox. That was outside. Inside it was modest and homey,
especially by Toronto synagogue standards, which in the late 20th century approached the papal.
This was one of the main reasons my
wife and I had chosen it. Another was that
it was a Conservative synagogue, which
meant men and women could sit together, and 12-year-old girls could have bat
mitzvahs and read from the Torah. Overall we were a folksy, laid-back congregation, where men occasionally showed up
without ties, where children did a lot of
improvisational running around, where
a woman might wear a prayer shawl one
Saturday to say Mourner’s Kaddish (as
one already had) and no one would say
anything (which they hadn’t). As a place
of worship it was more evolutionary than
revolutionary. Rabbi Kalbfleisch was neither. That was the beginning of his troubles. There was also, of course, the fact
that he wouldn’t backcheck.
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got my first real taste of the rabbi’s
character about a month after he arrived to take over the post, when I met
with him in his office to go over logistics
for Samantha’s bat mitzvah. The rabbinical offices at Shaarei Olam were on the
parking lot side, and presided over by an
ageless, razor-sharp multitasker named
Doreen, who dressed a bit like Auntie
Mame and who could tell you where every
single thing you might desire was located
in the building.
“He’s waiting for you,” she said when I
walked in. “You have a yarmulke with you?”
“Seriously?” I said. “It’s just his office,
not the sanctuary.”
“Your funeral,” she said with a little
shrug.
The rabbi’s office door was open when
I got to it; he was sitting behind his desk,
suit jacket on but unbuttoned, tie perfectly tied, his fingers laced on the desk in
front of him as he read something. He unlaced them when he saw me and slid them
wider on either side of him in a move that
could have been a benediction or a signal
that it was time to eat, either one. He was
a big guy, barrel-chested, with a good head
of wavy, sandy hair. There was something
of the self-help pitchman in his appearance, although he didn’t seem quite focused enough for the role; his hands were
big and meaty, but his gaze was distracted.
I
“Mark Posen,” he said. “Glad you could
make it. I’ve been looking forward to
a private chat with you. I’ve heard a lot
about you.”
“I’m flattered, I think,” I said.
“Uh-huh. You seem to have forgotten
your kippah, Mark. There’s one in the
cookie tin on the filing cabinet behind
you.”
I gave him a look, still not believing it.
His look didn’t waver. “I prefer it,” he said.
Out of the Marks and Spencer cookie tin
in question, I took my usual, a standard
black satin loaner.
“Better,” he said. “Sit, please.”
I told him that I was pressed for time; I’d
just come by to drop off my list of aliyah
requests for my daughter’s bat mitzvah –
the people we wanted to have come up to
assist with the reading of the Torah.
“Speaking of which,” he said, “I’ll need
you to take this home with you and fill it
out first. Just a brief questionnaire about
your honorees. Basic qualifications.” He
folded the form he’d been reading and
held it out to me. “Everyone will be getting
one from now on.”
“No disrespect, Rabbi,” I said, “but the
modus operandi here has always been for
the parents of bat mitzvah kids to provide
four or five names for aliyahs, and then
the rabbi – you in this case – just lets them
know if there’s room.”
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B16
The rabbi who
talking about Kabbalah, Mark, I’m talking about the original meaning of tikkun
olam, which refers to repairing the world
by simply following the rules of Jewish
continued from the previous page
practice and decorum.” I had the momen“I’m aware of the modus operandi here,” tary feeling I was being interviewed by a
he said. “You have no idea how aware I am TV talk-show host. “Mark, it’s come to my
of the modus operandi here. My modus attention that a small group of congreoperandi includes a little a priori home- gants at Shaarei Olam, present company
work. I find it can help avoid awkward included, have been reforming the Satursituations later on.” He was still holding day Shabbat service in a fashion that is not
exactly geared toward tikkun olam.”
the form out.
He was talking, of course, about the KidI took it. “If we’re done here, Rabbi -- ”
“Unfortunately, we’re not. Please sit dush Klub. More generally, about the fact
that although I’d been a regular attendee
down, you’re making me nervous.”
at services for the past six months, along
“I’ve got five minutes tops,” I said.
“Who doesn’t?” he said. The irony of with half a dozen friends I’d had since junit surprised me; it was tinged with a faint ior high school, none of us was remotely
weariness. I sat. “Mark,” he said, “have close to what anyone would consider an
you ever heard of the phrase tikkun olam?” observant Jew. We’d just been trapped by
“Simon Luria,” I said. “Kabbalistic vi- logistics. Synagogue regulations dictated
sionary in the 18th century, in Spain, I that if your child was having a bar or bat
think. Developed the idea of healing the mitzvah, they had to attend Saturday serworld by restoring order to it. Tikkun vices regularly in the year preceding the
event, along with a parent. Four or five of
olam.”
“So the stories about you were true,” he the guys in our group had kids of roughly
the same age, now all turning 12 and 13, so
said.
“No,” I said, “I just do a lot of cross- our mandated sentences of shul attendwords. And I don’t think Kabbalah is part ance overlapped. Initially this seemed
of the modus operandi around here either, like a plus; by sitting together we could
discuss sports sotto voce and get through
Rabbi.”
“HaShem
forbid,”
he
said.
“But
I’m
not
8499.2_JN Ad_FUNE.pdf
8/16/10
1:30:36the
PM service painlessly. The problem was
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
the Torah reading, which usually started
at about 10:45, and was conducted by an
80-year-old gentleman who had such a
quiet quaver of a voice that even a civilized whisper was audible over it.
Mark, have you ever
Worse, after the Torah reading came the
heard of the phrase
rabbi’s sermon, which with the rabbi of
tikkun olam?
the day meant 15 minutes of either terrible
jokes or political jingoism. In self-defence,
a group of us eventually approached the
rabbi with a proposition: we could maximize our own preparation for our kids’
transition to adulthood, we suggested, by
retiring, during the Torah reading, to the
Hebrew school lunchroom in the basement, where we’d hold a study seminar to explore the Torah portion of the
week. Our kids, meanwhile, would
stay in the sanctuary. The rabbi was
dubious, but agreed; he had his hostages, and we had the Kiddush Klub.
For tradition’s sake, we added a bottle
of Canadian Club, some herring tidbits,
and the odd pastry. The rabbi made us
promise to assign one person a week to
prepare an exegesis on the week’s portion,
which we did, and which we discussed
afterwards, in give and takes that turned
out to be surprisingly lively. When the
rabbinic changeover took place, we figured that the old rabbi would simply tell
the new one
what ad_yamato.pdf
the score was,8/13/10
and the12:10:35 PM
8499.2_JN
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status quo would prevail.
Clearly, we’d assumed too much.
“The Kiddush Klub,” I said.
“The Kiddush Klub,” he said. “Interesting choice of name, by the way. No doubt
a source of hilarity to you and your cronies.”
“Hilarity might be a stretch,” I said.
“None of us regard the Kiddush
Klub as a joke, Rabbi.”
“Really. Two K’s in the
name, I presume? Like
the Keystone Kops?”
“Or like Kit Kat, the
chocolate bar. And
that still doesn’t
make it a joke.
We’ve all learned
more about the
Torah in the last
year than we ever
have.”
“So I should be
thankful for the Kiddush Klub.”
“That’s up to you,” I
said. “We are.”
“Possibly I should recommend it to the liturgical department of the rabbinate. You could
franchise it.”
“Rabbi, I get the feeling this is heading
B17
T
somewhere specific. Could we get just get
there?”
“I’m shutting it down.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m terminating the Kiddush Klub. It’s
an idea which sends absolutely the wrong
message to the congregation at large, particularly our younger members. In the
interests of fairness, though, I’m giving
your group till the new year to disband.
That should be more than ample. As of
Jan.1, the Hebrew school lunchroom will
be locked on Shabbat. I was hoping you
could convey the notice of closure to the
rest of the group.”
“The notice of closure? I didn’t know we
were in a courtroom here.”
“We’re in God’s house, Mark. It’s never
anything but.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I said.
“You realize that I’ll have to discuss this
with the other Klub members.”
“Naturally. Just make sure it’s a quick
discussion. In questions of practice I won’t
be entertaining negotiations.”
“Rabbi,” I stood up at this point. I was
afraid if I didn’t, I’d crawl across the desk
and strangle him. “I really do have to get
going.”
I made it as far as the door. “Mark,” he
called, “one more thing. I understand
that you and some other members of the
congregation play a little pick-up hockey
during the week.”
“Adult shinny, not pick-up.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Pick-up games are usually closed.
Shinny is open to the general public.”
Something occurred to me. “Is hockey
unhalachic, too?”
“Of course not. But I played a bit myself
in high school in Ohio. I was wondering if
there’d be any objection to me coming out
to the game one night.”
“It’s shinny, Rabbi, like I said. It’s open
to everyone.”
“So you’ll run the idea past the group? I
wouldn’t want to make waves.”
***
e doesn’t want to make
waves?” said Avi Sklar. We
were sitting in the change
room at the Lester B. Pearson Memorial
Arena, putting on our equipment. It was
two days after my meeting with the rabbi,
and I’d just briefed the group. “First he
tells you he’s trashing the Kiddush Klub,
then he wants to know if he can come
play hockey with us?” Avi had been my
best friend since Grade 6. He co-owned
an interlocking driveway-paving company, and could bench press 250 pounds
a dozen times in a row.
“He wants our blessing,” I said. “He be-
“H
lieves in tikkun olam; he doesn’t want to
rock the boat.”
“Bullshit,” said Avi. “He just wants to let
everyone know that he’s a rabbi beforehand, so when he shows up no one’ll hit
him.”
“We don’t hit anyone anyway,” said
Ronny Spillman.
“He doesn’t know that,” said Avi. “He’s
American. You think they have a clue
about the laws of shinny?”
“This is like a priest who wants to play?”
said Pietro Bevilacqua. Pietro was one of
our regular goalies, as well as a regular in
at least six other games at the rink during
the week. He was known as the Human
Bocce Ball. With his skates on he was
maybe 5 1/2 feet tall.
“Kind of, Pietro,” I said. “Except rabbis aren’t
celibate and they don’t take confession.”
“I used to play with a priest,” he said.
“He was the dirtiest guy on the ice.”
“Kalbfleisch is completely full of s--t,”
said Avi. “Believe me.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but maybe he has a
point about the Klub, too. Our study sessions have been going downhill on their
own lately anyway. Guys are taking huge
bathroom breaks, and the quality of the
presentations is getting to be embarrassing. We’re always bickering.”
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B18
The rabbi who
“Hey, that’s what Jews do,” said Ronny.
“Italians, too,” said Pietro. “It’s very similar.”
“Forget the Klub for a second,” I said.
“What am I telling the Rabbi about hockey? Are we giving him our blessing?”
“If he’s got five bucks he doesn’t need it,”
Ronny said.
“He knows that. But he wants to know if
he’s welcome. It’s not exactly a crazy question.”
“Can he go top shelf?” said Pietro.
“Top shelf, please,” Avi said. “The question is, can he stand up on skates.”
“We should say yes,” said Stan Melvin.
“We should let him play.”
We looked at him as one. Stan was probably the shyest of all our group, a high
school history teacher who usually didn’t
volunteer information unless he was discussing the glories of golden Mycenae
or professional wrestling. “I’m worried
about the questionnaire Mark was talking
about. I got mine yesterday.”
“You mean the aliyah questionnaire, for
the honorees?” I said. Stan’s son Jordan’s
bar mitzvah was two weeks after Samantha’s bat. “It looked like boilerplate to me.
The usual questions. What’s the problem?”
“Brenda’s brother Steven is adopted,”
Stan said. Brenda was his wife. “And he
never had a conversion. I had him marked
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
down for the third aliyah. He has to have
it. If he doesn’t, I’ll end up divorced.”
“So why can’t he?” said Ronny.
“Because you have to be Jewish to be
called to the Torah,” I said, realizing it.
Stan nodded. “Steven was born gentile,
and apparently a gentile baby adopted by
Jewish parents has to have a certified conversion to be considered Jewish, which he
didn’t.”
“And so technically he can’t be called to
the Torah,” I said.
“That makes zero f-----g sense,” said
Avi. “He grew up in a Jewish home, right?
Brenda’s Jewish, so he’s Jewish. Done.
And who gives a s--t if he’s not? He could
be 99.99 per cent goy for all I care. No offense, Pietro.”
“None taken,” said Pietro. “I’m a 100 per
cent goy.”
“It’s true,” said Matt Joseph. “This is us.
Who cares about things like that?”
“Kalbfleisch,” I said.
Stan looked at me again. “The rabbi
told me Steven had to have a conversion
to come to the Torah, and it couldn’t be
a Reform conversion, either, it had to be
Orthodox or Conservative. Jordan’s bar is
in a month; there’s no time for any kind
of conversion. And besides, how can I ask
Brenda’s brother to get a conversion? He
reads Hebrew 10 times better than I do.
She’d kill me.”
“Did you tell the rabbi any of this?” I
asked.
“All of it,” said Stan. “He said there were
no exceptions to the rule. He said that it
was for the good of everyone.”
B19
T
A HAppy
HeAltHy CHAnukkAH
CHAG SAMEACH
shutterstock photo
“And you still think the guy’s not an a-hole?” Avi said to me.
“Stan,” I said, “Wait. If the rabbi said all
this, why do you want us to let him play?”
“Because it’s the only chance I have to
get on his good side,” Stan said. “We do
something nice for him, maybe he’ll do
the same for us. For me, anyway. Mark,
you get it, right? It’s for my marriage.”
“And now,” said Avi, “we are truly f----d.”
***
he rabbi came out to the game the
next Wednesday night. By design
Avi and I got to the rink early, so we
could greet any players who weren’t part
of our circle and brief them about his joining in, and to remind them to take it easy
on him, because he probably wouldn’t be
able to keep up. There were a lot of shrugs
and whatevers. The most interested comment I got was from a young guy named
Walter who drove up to the game every
week from downtown: “Can I shoot at his
jewels?”
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” I said to Avi,
sitting down to get dressed. “Maybe he’ll
be better than we think he’ll be.”
“I know exactly how good he’ll be,” said
Avi. “He’ll know all the rules, and he probably won’t skate on his ankles. Oh, and
his equipment will be new. But he’ll stink.
But what really stinks is the fact that he’s
coming at all. It’s totally bad form for a
rabbi to show up at a hockey game.”
“It is?”
“Pose, you know I’m right.” Pose was
Avi’s nickname for me, either that or oc-
T
casionally “the Pose”. I’d never been sure
whether it was a contraction of Posen or
poser. “And Kalbfleisch knows it too, I
guarantee. He knows exactly how much
he’s f---ing up the game by playing with
us.”
“I really doubt that,” I said. But I didn’t
get a chance to explain why, because at
that moment the rabbi walked into the
change room.
He was wearing a suit, although without
his usual tie, and pulling a rolling hockey
bag. At this particular point in history, on
the brink of the new millennium, hockey
bags with wheels were a novelty, and most
seasoned recreational player regarded
them with suspicion. If you weren’t strong
enough to carry your equipment, the feeling ran, how could you play the world’s
fastest game?
“Mark,” he nodded at us. “Avram.”
“Rabbi,” said Avi, a bit too evenly.
“Guys,” I announced. “this is Rabbi Jeffery Kalbfleisch.”
“Just Jeffery, please.”
“My bad. Guys, this is Jeffery Kalbfleisch.
Rabbi Kalbfleisch, the guys.”
There was a respectable chorus of heys
and hellos from the room. Pietro the goalie actually paused in putting on his chest
protector to bow tentatively, a move close
to genuflection. The rabbi nodded back,
and came over to where we were dressing.
“Is there anywhere in particular I should
sit?” he said. “A designated area for rookies?”
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B20
THE RABBI WHO
WOULDN’T BACKCHECK
CONTINUED FROM THE PREVIOUS PAGE
“Just take any open spot,” I said. “We
don’t stand on ceremony here. Oh, and
Rabbi, do you have a black jersey?”
“Navy,” he said. “And a white.”
“Navy’s fine. You’re going dark today.”
The shadow of a smile creased his face.
“Why am I not surprised?”
“No symbolism is involved in team-selection here, Rabbi,” I said, “I can assure
you. We’re Kabbalah-free.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” he said, and
took a spot along the wall adjoining ours,
between Walter the downtown commuter
and Ronny Spillman.
I leaned over to tie my skates, which Avi
was already doing. “Avram?” I said under
my breath. “Would that be you?”
“F--- off,” said Avi.
While we finished dressing I watched the
rabbi out of the corner of my eye. He was
fastidious in removing his suit, which he
hung not on the hook behind him but on
a wooden hanger he took out of his equipment bag; he then placed the hanger on
the hook. At least he seemed to know
the right order to put on his equipment.
The navy jersey he’d mentioned was a bit
tight, and Ronny had to help him pull the
back down over his shoulder pads. Most
of his pads, I noticed, were similarly snug;
it was as though they harked from an earlier era and he hadn’t had them on for a
while. The overall effect, along with his
heft, was to make him look like a slightly
overstuffed, slightly sheepish, boy. It also
made me feel twice as responsible for him
as I wanted to.
At 10 minutes to the hour I let him know
that this was when we headed out to the
ice. The Zamboni driver was just finishing up his flood, and as he steered the machine through the big gate at the end of
the rink the rabbi made a move to step on
the ice. I put my hand on his arm.
“We have to wait till he’s completely off
and closes the gate,” I said. “It’s an insurance issue.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll remember.”
The Zamboni gate closed, and the rabbi
stepped out, and skated toward the far
end to take a lap. His style was pretty
much as Avi had predicted, slow and more
than a bit stiff. We all took our warm-up
laps and practice shots on Pietro and the
other goalie. Sticks were tapped. Avi shot
the game puck into the other end to get
things going, and Stan, who had arrived
late but dressed quickly, hustled back to
pick up the puck and passed it immediately to the rabbi, who was skating carefully up the boards beside him. “Go ahead,
T
Rabbi, take it up!” Stan said, grinning like
a crazed cheerleader. Kalbfleisch nodded
slightly, a humble man of God. Then he
took one longer stride, and put his head
down.
Ten seconds later, Pietro was fishing the
puck out of the net behind him. Five minutes after that, the rabbi’s dark team was
ahead 3-0, and the universe had shifted.
He was, against all odds, a terrific hockey player. He was great. He had the kind
of totally natural talent that’s exhilarating
and deflating to watch at once: it uplifts
you with the realization of what’s possible
in the universe, and drags you down with
the certainty that it will never be possible
for you. His stiff skating in the warm-up
was just a variation, it turned out, on a
thoroughbred’s stilted gait before a horse
race, a little rabbinical dressage. In fact,
he had the trick of speed, which in hockey
is palpably a trick. Two steps, and he was
at top velocity, past everyone. He also had
great hands, and an effortless, slingy wrist
shot. He could genuinely go top shelf. Avi
was built like a concrete block and was
by far the best athlete among us, and he
wasn’t in the same league as the rabbi. If
the pros were the ne plus ultra, the rabbi
was a lot closer to them than we were to
him.
The game ended with a football score,
14 to 6 for the dark team. In the dressing
DECEMBER 11, 2014
room the guys on both teams
seemed either too star-struck
to speak to him, or couldn’t compliment
him enough. Stan was one of the latter.
The rabbi accepted the accolades modestly, and got out of his equipment with
a speed that suddenly looked practised,
keeping eye contact to a minimum. He
didn’t pause till he got to the door with
his wheeled bag. “Thanks for the game,
gentlemen,” he said.
“Rabbi, no problem,” said Stan. “And
come again, please.”
“If you insist.”
Happy Chanukah!
MAY THE SPIRIT OF
HANUKKAH BE WITH
YOU THROUGHOUT
THE NEW YEAR
DECEMBER 11, 2014
A
“We do.”
“Yeah, and bring more rabbis!” yelled
Walter from the corner.
“That I can’t guarantee,” Kalbfleisch
said. The laugh it got him as he went out
the door was a lot louder than it should
have been.
“So what do you think?” I asked Avi
when it died down.
“The f----r didn’t backcheck once,” he
said.
***
B21
T
little primer here, for anyone who
needs it: backchecking is to hockey what cleaning up is to dinner – a
thankless but necessary task that operates
on the fringes of the action. It happens
when you lose the puck to the other team
in their zone, and the play flows back toward your own net, and you have to turn
and chase after it. Besides being painful
and soul-crushing, backchecking is also
something that recreational players aren’t
ordinarily expected to engage in – unless
you happen to be a ringer, a truly good
player who somehow stumbles into an
average game. The rules for ringers are
immutable: you do your best not to show
up anyone on the other team; you pass
the puck at least once to everyone on your
team, including the lousiest guy; and you
never try your hardest, except when you’re
backchecking, which for you is mandatory. The one thing you’re expected to
do with all your resources when you’re a
ringer is backcheck, because it’s the one
unglamorous thing that makes you momentarily everyone’s equal. For a ringer
to fail to backcheck in a shinny game is as
much a mortal sin as a strategic one.
So when Avi called me at 12:00 that
night, I thought I knew why.
“Avi, it’s midnight.”
“I know, Pose, but this is serious.”
I rolled over to the edge of the bed with
the phone, so I wouldn’t wake up my wife.
“The rabbi not backchecking might be a
lot of things, but serious isn’t one of them.”
Who said anything about backchecking? I’m talking about Stan. I just left his
house. I was there with Ronny and Matt;
we had to walk him around his block three
times to get him to calm down. He is totally wack, Pose, about this aliyah affair. I’m
really worried about him.”
“Why is he still upset? I thought he
established some nice rapport with the
rabbi at the rink.”
“He established that he was a total
ass-kisser. You saw him.”
“But that was the whole point, right? To
get to know Kalbfleisch so he could talk to
him about his brother-in-law, and get him
to change his mind about the aliyah.”
“Right. But now he says he can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because the rabbi’s too good.”
“At hockey? How does that change anything?”
“Who can tell with Stan? He said something about his original idea being that the
rabbi would be a lousy player, and Stan
would offer to help him with his game.
The rabbi would owe him something,
so he could ask for something in return.
But because the rabbi turned out to be so
good, there’s nothing Stan can do for him,
and no way he can ask him for anything.
He says Kalbfleisch is even more perfect
now than he was before. He’s says he’s
afraid of him.”
“So? So am I.”
“No, you’re not. Or if you are it’s for some
weird, Pose-ish reason, like you enjoy being afraid of him. Stan isn’t enjoying this.
He thinks it could be the end of his family
as he knows it.”
“Why doesn’t he just talk to Brenda already? She’ll understand.”
“No, she won’t. You know Brenda. She’ll
just tell him he’s a coward, and then go
smoke a cigarette. Then in the morning
he’ll find his clothes on the sidewalk. She’s
done it before. Meanwhile, why is Stan
letting that schmuck do this to him, can
you tell me that? Why doesn’t he just fill
him in?”
“Because he really is afraid of him,” I
said. Avi didn’t answer. I recognized his
silence. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“You’re the man, Pose,” said Avi. “My regards to the missus.”
The next afternoon I left work early so I
could get to the shul before five. Doreen
wasn’t at her usual post at the reception
desk, but the rabbi’s door was open again
when I got to it. The rabbi himself was
sitting at his desk as he had been before,
but this time with his head in his hands.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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B22
The rabbi who
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More precisely, his elbows were propped
on the desk and the heels of his palms
were jammed into his eyes.
“Who is it?” he said, without moving.
“It’s Mark Posen,” I said. “Are you all
right?”
“Eye drops,” he said. “I tried using new
soft contacts at last night’s game for the
first time. The experiment was not successful.”
“You could have fooled me,” I said.
“Plus about 18 other guys. How many
goals would you have scored if you could
actually see?
He dropped his hands and opened
his eyes. His gaze on me was teary and
bloodshot. “I expected you might drop by
again sooner or later, Mark. I didn’t think
we really finished our discussion the other
day. Second thoughts about the Kiddush
Klub?”
“No, I’m here about something else. At
least someone else. Stan Melvin.”
“Stan Melvin,” he said. “Stanley Melvin.
From the hockey game.”
“Not hockey,” I said. “Aliyahs. I’m here
on Stan’s behalf, Rabbi, to ask you to reconsider your decision about the aliyah
list for his son’s bar mitzvah, and let his
brother-in-law Steven come to the Torah.
You’d be doing Stan a huge favour if you
did.”
He regarded me for a moment longer
through his watering eyes, then pulled a
Kleenex from the box in front of him, and
got up and went over to the office window.
Outside, the late November afternoon was
turning quickly to dusk, the days shortening toward Christmas. Everything on
Leslie Street, the leafless trees, the paper
boxes, even the traffic, was rendered in
black and white. “There’s a simple solution. If Stanley’s brother-in-law has a suitable conversion, he’ll be welcomed to the
bimah with open arms.”
“Even if there was time for a conversion,” I said, “which there isn’t, Stan
couldn’t suggest it without offending his
brother-in-law and wife enough that it
would probably ruin the bar mitzvah and
a lot more.”
“My hands are tied, Mark. Certain laws
are like Isaac Luria’s vessels of light. Break
one, and you shatter the whole.”
“Except you aren’t a lightkeeper,” I
said. “You’re a rabbi at a suburban
synagogue where the people can
be, okay, exasperating sometimes, I
admit it, but also pretty civil. So please,
be civil back, Rabbi. Do the right thing.
Make an exception.”
“Is that the sum total of your argument,
Mark? It’s not exactly talmudic.”
“I’m not trying to be talmudic, Rabbi.
I just want you to show Stan Melvin some
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
compassion, and help him out of a jam.”
“My first job here isn’t to be compassionate, Mark. It’s to be constant.”
“Stubborn, you mean.”
“Resolute.”
“Full of s--t,” I said, amazing myself a bit.
He put his hand on the window pane in
front him, just the fingertips. “Is that supposed to shock me, Mark?”
“I don’t know. Maybe’s it’s supposed to
let you know how far you are from what
anybody here considers normal rabbilike behaviour. Rabbis are supposed to be
sage, like Solomon, right? But we actually don’t need you to be sage here; all you
have to do is to be a tiny bit flexible, and
help out a fellow Jew and human being. I
can’t believe that doesn’t fit into your job
description.”
“Did you know, Mark, that in the Lurianic kabbalah the ritual mitzvot are considered as important as the ethical ones?
The idea is that they exalt God, who is the
agency of healing the broken world.”
“How about Stan’s broken marriage?”
“Aren’t you being a bit dramatic?”
“No. That’s the point. If Stan’s brother-in-law doesn’t get an aliyah, anything
could happen. Really. His wife Brenda
is a very strong-minded person. I mean
you probably didn’t notice last night, but
Stan’s backup stick is a $200 Easton composite, the most expensive stick you can
buy. Brenda got it for him for his birthday,
and Stan’s terrified of breaking it; he says
if he does Brenda will never forgive him
for it. And he’s probably right. That’s why
it’s only his backup stick. And that’s just a
B23
T
RBC Dominion Securities Inc.
hockey stick, Rabbi, not an aliyah for her
brother.”
“She could choose to blame me instead.”
“Rabbi, this is Brenda Melvin we’re talking about. She might choose to hate you,
but she’ll blame Stan.”
“That’s regrettable.”
“Exactly. And you can prevent it. Just
turn a blind eye to a rule that no one
around here ever followed anyway, and
life for Stan could go back to the status
quo, one-two-three.”
“The status quo is never what you think
it is, Mark. Sometimes to make things
better, first you have to make them a little
worse.”
“Rabbi,” I said, telling myself to breathe,
“are you aware that Stan was the person
who convinced the rest of us to ask you to
come play hockey with us? He was your
ticket to the game.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” He turned
back to the window. “I’ll have to thank
him.”
“I know how you can.”
He didn’t appear to have heard me. “Tell
me something, Mark. What kind of hockey player do you think Isaac Luria would
have been?
Breathe, I thought. “Goony,” I said. “He
would have spent a lot of time in the penalty box.”
“Elusive,” said the rabbi. “He would
have been impossible to catch.”
***
told the group about the rabbi’s response at the Kiddush Klub that Saturday. Stan wasn’t there; his attendance
had been spotty since the dawn of the
aliyah affair, which was ironic, because
discussing the situation had lent a new
urgency to our sessions, along with the
rabbi’s impending drop-dead date.
“It’s like today’s portion,” said Ronny
when I was done. “Mark’s Abraham, and
the rabbi’s God. But is Stan Sodom or
Gomorrah?”
“How can a guy be such a great hockey
player, and such a terrible person?” said
Matt. “It isn’t right.”
“It’s humanity,” said Ronny. “The important thing is what we’re going to do
for Stan. Maybe we should all talk to the
rabbi.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Avi. “Kalbfleisch is playing hockey with us now?
Fine, let him play. At the next game I’ll fill
him in. You guys can help by aiming him
at me.”
“You can’t fill him in,” I said.
“Why not?” said Avi.
“Well, for one thing he’s a rabbi,” said
Matt Joseph. “He’s probably non-violent.”
“He’s not a Hindu, Joseph,” said Ronny.
“He’s from Cleveland.”
“That’s true,” said Matt. “You know Mrs.
Ginsberg, the older lady who wears a talles
in the sanctuary sometimes?”
“She does it on the anniversary of her
husband’s death,” I said. “It was his prayer shawl.”
“Last week the rabbi told her she
couldn’t wear it anymore,” said Matt.
“He didn’t do it in private, either. He
told her in the lobby after the service. It
looked like he wanted to make sure he
had an audience. When she left she
was crying.”
“That settles it,” said Avi. “It’s
filling-in time.”
I
***
ut Avi did not fill the rabbi in.
He abstained for one simple
reason: I asked him not to. I
said it wasn’t fair to rush to judgment,
that there might be redeeming factors
we couldn’t see that could account for
Kalbfleish’s apparent pettiness and prickishness, even for the fact that he was an out
and out bully. Why did I take the rabbi’s
side? Partly because I didn’t want my
daughter’s bat mitzvah to be spoiled by an
intra-shul civil war. But mostly because I
loved watching him play hockey. He had
inserted something into our weekly
lives that was dangerously close to
beauty. Every Wednesday night he
managed to pull off a manoeuvre
that was dazzling but novel, as
though it had just occurred
to him for the first time.
B
Wishing Our Clients
and Friends a Very
happy Chanukah!
Penny Petroff, mba
Vice President
& Investment Advisor
416-733-1074
[email protected]
Member-Canadian Investor Protection Fund.
RBC Dominion Securities
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The rabbi who
His off-ice style might have been calculated enough that it approached sadism,
but his hockey style was so devoid of
planning it resembled athletic jazz. In
fact, outside of his failure to backcheck,
on the ice he actually wasn’t an a--hole.
He wasn’t even a bad teammate. He gave
up the puck regularly, and he didn’t whine
or carp like some talented guys I’d played
with. He never upbraided anyone for failing to receive one of his perfect passes, or
for directing a less than perfect one in his
direction. True, he also rarely complimented anyone for making a nice play,
but on the ice he wasn’t a blowhard. On
the ice he wasn’t a phony. He was just a
guy who didn’t backcheck.
And my guiltier secret was this: as much
as I liked watching him play hockey, I liked
talking to him more. Because I could say
anything to him. It was the same disjunction: ideologically he was uptight enough
to make you wear a skullcap in his office;
conversationally he was as permissive as
Lenny Bruce.
“Do you believe that people have hidden functions in this world, Mark?” he
asked me one afternoon.
“I believe they have one main function:
to be decent. A mensch. Which is exactly
what I’m asking you to be.”
“I’m not talking about a duty, I mean an
ulterior part to play, a secret role. Like Ju-
das at the Last Supper, for Christians.”
“How about a rabbi at a bar mitzvah, say,
who relaxes the aliyah rules, for Jews?”
“Very clever. But that’s a bit too obvious,
Mark. I doubt it’s in the cards for me.”
“So what part is, rabbi? The hero?”
He made a soft sound like a laugh. “I
can’t think of a single person at this synagogue who would consider me heroic.
Maybe Isaac Luria himself would, if he became a member. In the Lurianic scheme I
might fulfil that function.”
“Really?” I said. “What do kabbalists
think about delusions of grandeur?”
“They don’t think they’re delusions,” he
said. “And they don’t think they’re grand.”
He looked at me. “What do you think,
Mark?”
“The truth? I have no idea. Mind you,
I have no idea what we’re talking about,
either.”
“You need to figure it out,” he said. “And
sooner than later.”
That’s what talking to him was like: a
conversation that on the surface sounded cogent, but that you never really truly
understood while you were having it,
possibly because it was half insane. There
were only two predictable things about
our discussions. At some point, after dismissing whatever new pitch I was making for Stan out of hand, he would issue
a prophetic warning about time running
out on me and my “cronies” that was
worthy of Jeremiah. And every conversation with him also came shrouded in
his own fatalism, as though he was convinced he was eventually going to make a
T
morally irretrievable mistake, one everyone would pay for and he couldn’t do anything to prevent. It was like a tale of two
dooms.
And then the dooms came together.
It happened at our last game in December, three days before what was to
be the last meeting of the Kiddush Klub.
Stan had stopped showing up at the Klub
completely by this time, but he was still
coming out to hockey. In the locker room
on this last Wednesday of the year he was
there, as usual, getting dressed. For once,
though, Rabbi Kalbfleisch was late.
The rabbi still hadn’t arrived when the
Zamboni driver finished our flood, and
we ended up going out on the ice without
him. We played the first 10 minutes or so
that way, which felt undeniably strange –
ungrounded and centreless somehow. It
was actually a relief when I saw him come
out of the locker room door, pulling his
jersey down as he walked. He apologized,
saying that he’d had a meeting that had
run late, and that in the rush he’d forgotten his hockey sticks in his office.
“Does anyone have an extra stick I could
borrow?” he said.
“Take my backup,” I said. “We both
shoot right.”
“Your stick looks a bit short for me,
Mark, thanks. Stanley, yours looks closer
to my length. Do you mind?”
Stan looked up, as did most of us. None
of us would have ever considered asking Stan to borrow his Easton, even if we
needed it. But this was Kalbfleisch asking, and I could see Stan wavering.
DECEMBER 11, 2014
No problem.
No slapshots.
I’ll be careful.
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at the remains of the Easton. Someone
gave Kalbfleisch another spare stick, and
he turned without another word and rejoined the play.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Avi.
I stepped over the bench before he could
say anything and went back into the hallway behind us. Our locker room was
the second one down the hall. I went in
and walked over to the rabbi’s changing
spot, where his wheeled hockey bag was
pushed up against the bench. I rolled the
bag back a foot or so. Lying under the
bench were two white Koho sticks, with
the letters “J.K.” printed in magic marker
on the taped handles.
I went back into the hallway and opened
the nearest gate onto the ice surface. The
play was in the far end, and the rabbi was
coasting slowly toward his own blue line,
his back to me. I skated as hard as I could
at him, and grabbed the too-tight navy
jersey just under his armpit, jerking him
half-around in the process.
“You did that on purpose,” I said.
“Mark?” His voice was surprised, but his
eyes were less so. “What are you talking
about?”
“Stan’s stick. You broke it on purpose.”
“That’s ridiculous. Are you even supposed to be on the ice now?”
“You planned it, Rabbi. I was just in the
locker room. You didn’t forget your sticks.
“Rabbi, really,” I said, “take mine. It’s got
a lot of goals in it.”
But Kalbfleisch had eyes only for Stan.
“Stanley?”
“Sure,” Stan blurted. “Sure.” He reached
back behind the bench and handed the
Easton to the Rabbi. “Just one thing. If
you could maybe not take a slapshot with
it. I think it might have a small crack in
the shaft. If you don’t mind.”
“No problem,” said the rabbi. “No slapshots. I’ll be careful.”
He took the stick and went over to the
dark team’s bench, getting there just in
time for a line change, when meant he
could step right out on the ice. A clearing pass came off the boards as he did; he
picked it up, skated over our blue line, and
with no hesitation at all pulled Stan’s stick
back over his right shoulder, and brought
it down in a full slapshot motion I’d never
seen him use before. The stick hit the ice
before the puck, and snapped halfway up
the shaft. The rabbi came to a stop, still
holding the upper half of the stick. He
bent down, picked up the remaining half,
and skated over to our bench.
“My sincere apologies, Stanley,” he said.
“I don’t know what got into me. It must
have been an automatic reflex.” He handed Stan the two halves of the stick. “I guess
you were right about that crack,” he said.
Stan didn’t say anything; he was looking
They were on the floor behind your bag.”
“They were? Unbelievable. I must be
even more distracted than I thought.”
“I always knew you were sort of a bastard, and a tyrant, but I didn’t think you
were actually a bad person. Not really bad.
All the other rotten things you did had a
code behind them, at least. But that was
just a truly bad thing, all on its own. It was
just cruel. Why would you do something
like that?”
He let himself lean in closer to me, my
left hand still buried in his jersey. His eyes
weren’t even remotely surprised, I realized. Just sad. “Somebody had to do some-
thing, Mark,” he said. “And apparently it
wasn’t going to be you.”
“You prick,” I said. I dropped the glove
on my right hand onto the ice. “You want
to see me do something? I’ll start now.”
“No, you won’t,” Avi said. He was behind
me, his hand simultaneously around my
wrist like a vice.
“Avi, let go of me, I’m going to kill him.”
“No, you’re not,” said Avi. I couldn’t have
moved my hand, I had the feeling, if I used
both arms. “You’re going to come back to
the bench so we can finish the game.”
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The rabbi who
“It’s sage advice Avram is giving you,
Mark,” said Kalbfleisch. “Wasn’t that what
you were always looking for, sageness?”
“It’s sagacity, you psychopath,” I said.
When we got to the bench Avi pushed
me through the gate, and sat me down beside him. The rest of the team was staring,
but I couldn’t have cared less.
“Why did you stop me?” I said. “I wanted to go with him.”
“Well, he’s got three inches and maybe
30 pounds on you,” said Avi. “Also, going
with people is not your job. This is hockey. We have roles here, Pose. Some guys
analyze. Some guys enforce.”
“So enforce,” I said. “I changed my
mind. Fill him in. I give you permission.”
“Excellent,” he said. “Let me just pick
my spot, and I’ll do it.”
On the ice Kalbfleisch had finished his
shift, and was heading back to the bench.
“Just one thing,” I said. “No concussions,
okay?”
“I won’t touch his head,” said Avi. “I
promise.”
“OK,” I said. Kalbfleisch had taken a
seat on the bench beside Walter, who was
talking animatedly to him, gesturing with
his hands. The rabbi kept his gaze on the
game. “Maybe no broken bones, either, or
visible marks,” I said. “We have to be holistic here.”
“I won’t touch him at all,” said Avi.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll just talk to him,” he said.
“What are you going to say?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just going to
talk to him.”
Which is exactly what he did. With about
five minutes left in the game, Avi took a
long pass from Ronny at centre and broke
into the clear – at least for a moment. A
dark blur went past our bench so quickly it took me a second to figure out what
it was: Kalbfleisch was chasing him. He
caught Avi at the blueline, lifted his stick
from behind, took the puck, and wheeled
back in the opposite direction, surprising everyone so completely that he was
in on our goal before anyone knew it.
Once there, he executed a toe-drag deke
that was almost apologetic in its ease, a
deke that said to Pietro in net, ‘I’m going
to start a deke, but with your permission
I’m not even going to finish it, because
just this slow-motion part will freeze you
completely in your anticipation of what is
about to come. And what is about to come
is the puck going through your five-hole
into the net right…now.’ It was brilliant
piece of non-deking, a deke sans deke, infinite less making infinite more. It might
have been the best goal he scored all fall.
He turned to coast back up the ice, and
Avi, who’d been following him, met him
at the blue line, bumping into him gently
and continuing up the rink with him, an
attached tandem, drifting the way players
sometimes will. They were obviously engaged in conversation, but Avi’s back was
to me, and I had no idea what he was saying, or how Kalbfleisch was reacting to it.
The next day the rabbi resigned from the
shul. He was gone by the weekend.
thanK you
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***
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
M
y daughter Samantha had her bat
mitzvah the following Saturday.
She did a terrific job, which surprised me not at all. Despite my misgivings, the fill-in rabbi, a retired insurance
agent with rabbinical certification, did a
great job himself with the sermon afterwards, noting that Samantha had been a
“sweet singer for Israel.” Her friends threw
their ridiculous soft candies at her, she
ducked and squealed, and we all trooped
through the lobby into the banquet hall to
eat a variety of spicy eggplant and chick
pea salads, and give our various speeches.
Mine involved baseball, but I still got my
wife to cry within 17 seconds of my opening. When I was done, Avi came over and
shook my hand.
“Great speech, Pose,” he said. “As usual,
I had no idea what you were talking
about.”
We got a glass of wine each
and wandered out into the
lobby, and through the lobby back into the sanctuary.
It was deserted except for
the candy wrappers on the
carpet. I looked at the ark
and the gold lions flanking
it. The lion on the left really
could have used a coat of paint.
“So what did you say to him?”
I said.
“Who?”
“Avi,” I said. “Please.”
“I asked him if he believed
in God. He said he did. I
said he didn’t, and I had
proof. He asked me what
the proof was. I told him
if he believed in God, he’d
I asked him if he
believed in God.
He said he did.
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have faith that God would protect him
from what was going to happen to him if
he showed up at the rink next week. But I
was pretty sure he wasn’t going to show up
at the rink. Or even at the shul again.
So I was pretty sure he didn’t believe
in God, either.”
I waited for him to go on, my
best friend. But he took a sip
of his wine instead. “So what
did he say?” I said.
“That’s the weird thing. He
didn’t seem scared at all, or even upset. It
was kind of a letdown.”
“Avi, what did he say?”
“Thank you.”
I looked at him. “He said thank you.”
“Yeah, that’s all. Thank you. Like he was
expecting it, or maybe hoping for it. Like
he was relieved.”
I looked back at the ark. “Maybe he was.”
“Pose, don’t do that, please. Don’t say
things like that unless you’re serious. You
really think he was waiting to be faced? To
be put down? Like a guy with a fetish? Tell
me if you do, it would help. Otherwise I’m
just losing my touch.”
“You’re not losing your touch, Avi. But it
wasn’t a fetish.”
“What then?”
“Tikkun olam,” I said. “The world made
whole.”
He hit me on the shoulder with his free
hand, not the one with the wine but the
one closest to me, a short little punch that
was still incredibly painful. It had always
been a mystery to me how he did it. “F-- off ,” he said. “Be serious, you prick,
I mean it. What do you mean the world
made whole? What is that?”
“Who’s Stan having do the aliyahs at Jordan’s bar mitzvah now?” I said.
“The Pope,” he said dangerously. “Ayatollah Khomeini, Hulk Hogan. Anyone he
wants now, Mark, you know that.”
“His brother-in-law?”
“Of course his brother-in-law. Where
have you been? That problem’s solved.
Kalbfleisch is gone.”
“Kalbfleisch is gone,” I said. “And Stan’s
brother-in-law is getting his aliyah. And
the Kiddush Klub will reconvene, strong-
er than ever. And we will play hockey like
always, but somehow enjoy it more. And
the world is healed. Tikkun olam.”
I waited for him to hit me again. But he
didn’t. Instead there was a pause – a Shakespearian one by Avi’s standards. Then
he raised his wine glass in a slow-motion
semblance of a toast, not to me so much
as to the space in general, to the lions rampant and ragged. To wonder. “I must be
completely s--t-faced. It actually makes
sense. The world made whole. And that
was one wacked-out rabbi. Couldn’t he
have just put it in a sermon?”
There was no point in pushing the envelope, I thought. My shoulder was still
tingling. I’d wait till tomorrow to tell him
about the brand new Easton stick Stan
had found sitting on his veranda, an envelope taped to it, a bar mitzvah card inside, inscribed with nothing but a single,
hand-written word: “Regrets”.
“It was a pretty nice goal, though,” Avi
said.
“Forget the goal,” I said. “He backchecked.” n
HAPPY HANUKKAH
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From the Bad Boy Family to yours!
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DECEMBER 11, 2014
Media companies lack sympathy for Israel
BARBARA KAY
SPECIAL TO THE CJN
T
here’s an old joke that I used to find
funny. A man is walking down the
street in Paris, when he sees a pit
bull attacking a little girl. He kills the dog
and saves the child’s life.
Afterward, he is swarmed by reporters.
They say, “Tell us your name. Your fellow
Parisians will love you when they see tomorrow’s headlines: ‘Hero saves girl from
vicious dog.’
“But I’m not from Paris,” the man replies.
“That’s okay,” say the journalists. “All
France will love you when they see the
headlines, ‘Hero saves girl from vicious
dog.’
“But I’m not from France,” the man says.
“Oh well,” the reporters respond. “All of
Europe will love you when they see the
headline ...”
“But I’m not from Europe,” he interrupts.
“Well, where are you from?” they ask.
“I’m from Israel.”
The next day’s headline reads: “Israeli
kills little girl’s dog.”
onto Jews praying at the Western Wall.
To appreciate the significance of these
editorial decisions, consider the reaction
if a New York Times headline following
the October attack on Parliament Hill
had been “Gun shoots bullets into monument.”
That media bias against Israel exists is
no longer a hypothesis to be proved. No
reasonable observer can fail to concede
that the media are disproportionately obsessed with Israel, or that Israel is held to a
higher moral standard than other nations
in its behaviour toward its avowed enemies. The vitriol can be astonishing, even
in normally respectable publications.
A Sky News reporter compared the strikes
on Gaza this past summer to the nuclear
bombing of Hiroshima. Time magazine
claimed Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians to steal their internal organs, a blood
libel of the most vile and brazen kind. The
New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief
claimed stories of Hamas intimidation of
journalists were “nonsense,” even though
Times reporters had documented several
examples of it. Cartoonists routinely depict Israel with imagery that conscious-
***
In October, a terrorist drove his car into
a crowd at a light-rail station in Jerusalem, killing a three-month old baby and
a woman before fleeing. The police pursued and eventually killed him. “Israeli
police shoot man in East Jerusalem,” the
Associated Press reported. The headline
was later changed to “Car slams into east
Jerusalem train station.” Only after social
media protests forced AP’s hand did a responsible headline emerge: “Palestinian
kills baby at Jerusalem station.”
Covering the same incident, Sky News
ran a ticker at the bottom of the screen informing viewers, “Israeli police ‘say’ a driver has rammed his car into pedestrians in
East Jerusalem in an ‘intentional’ attack
causing several injuries.” The internal
quotes casted doubt on the reliability of the
Israeli report, and yet another bulletin stated “Israeli police have clashed with Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s al-Aksa Mosque
compound after Jewish nationalists announced plans to visit the site” with no
caveats. Causality is offered here with no
mention of the fact that, previously, rocks
and Molotov cocktails had been thrown
ly resurrects a long history of Christian
blood libels, the obscenities of Nazi-era
Der Sturmer graphics and the more recent
Big Lie of Holocaust inversion, with Palestinians as the new Anne Frank and Israel
the Hitler.
A Happy, Healthy
Chanukah
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Wish all their clients and friends
a peaceful, happy Chanukah
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jna vFUbj
DECEMBER 11, 2014
No reasonable
observer can fail
to concede that
the media are
disproportionately
obsessed with Israel
Operation Protective Edge provides a
good background for analysis of media
bias because its casus belli is so unambiguous. This was a war of necessity.
The unprovoked, indiscriminately aimed
and pan-Israel rocket attacks from Hamas,
which terrorized all Israelis for weeks on
end and threatened to bring Israel’s economy to a standstill.
The discovery of the vast Gaza tunnels
complex, with its stark implications for
human tragedy and national cataclysm,
sobered even the most ardent Palestinian
sympathizers, foreign and domestic.
Widespread anti-Israel media bias is a
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charge anti-Zionists tend to wave away
as a conspiracy theory. But the accusation
has become untenable for any self-respecting observer. The moral clarity
around this war has also inspired several
brilliant and detailed proofs of media bias
which, taken together, amount to a damning indictment of the mainstream media.
Especially notable in this line is the meticulously detailed analysis of New York
Times bias against Israel by investigative
reporter Richard Behar in the Aug. 21 issue
of Forbes magazine. Behar notes that the
Times’ most important reporter in Gaza for
the past few years, Abeer Ayoub, a Palestinian resident of Gaza, has used an image of
Yasser Arafat as his profile photo on Facebook and boycotted all Israeli products.
Behar does offer words of praise for the
Globe and Mail’s Patrick Martin and the
CBC’s Derek Stoffel, among others, for
their candour regarding Hamas’s use of
human shields, and penchant for firing
rockets from schools. But no honest skeptic can read Behar’s extensive report (42
pages long in print) and deny extreme
bias pervades not just the Times but almost the entire mainstream media (with
the BBC the most flagrant offender).
Matti Friedman, a journalist and author who worked as a reporter and editor
in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associat-
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Kraft Berger LLP
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ed Press from 2006 to 2011, has written a
widely shared article explaining how and
why so many media covering the Middle
East are essentially telling their audiences
that Jews are the “worst people on Earth.”
Friedman begins by noting a recent New
Yorker article summing up world events
over the summer. The article assigned one
sentence each to the horrors of Nigeria
and Ukraine, four sentences to the abominations of Islamic State and the rest – 30
sentences – to Israel and Gaza.
But Friedman isn’t interested in bashing
the New Yorker, or any other publication.
He has a bigger story to tell. And “story”
is the key word, because the central Israel
narrative shows little variation in mainstream media. To measure the importance
of a story to a news organization, Friedman writes, look at the staffing.
During his tenure at AP, there were 40
staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian
territories – more than in China, Russia,
India, the “Arab Spring” countries and all
50 sub-Saharan African countries combined. Exactly one stringer covered Syria
before the Syrian civil war began, even
though more lives have been lost in Syrian violence in the last three years than in
Israel-Arab conflicts over the last century.
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DECEMBER 11, 2014
Foreign reporters get skewed version of Israel
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
Friedman says AP staffers in Israel
quickly learned the rules governing what
got published. Corruption in the Palestinian Authority? The bureau chief told
Friedman that was “not the story.” And yet
Israeli corruption was covered thoroughly.
During one seven-week period in November and December 2011, Friedman tallied
27 articles about various moral, political,
cultural and social failings of Israeli society – more than all the stories critical of
Palestinian society published in the previous three years.
The Hamas charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction, was never mentioned
in print in all the time Friedman worked
for AP.
When Israel imposed censorship, staffers on media AP reporters could say so,
but when Hamas imposed censorship
they could not.
That is because, Friedman writes, AP
feared Hamas intimidation. As an editor,
he admits, “I personally erased a key detail – that Hamas fighters were dressed as
civilians and were being counted as civilians in the death toll” because of a threat
to a reporter.
Most reporters in Gaza, Friedman says,
“believe their job is to document violence
directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians.”
The few journalists who wrote about Hamas
rocket launches this summer were mostly
“scrappy, peripheral and newly arrived players – a Finn, an Indian crew, a few others.
These poor souls didn’t get the memo.”
AP staffers in Israel
quickly learned the
rules governing what
got published
While the Arab world is virtually closed
to the media, Israel is absurdly open. Hundreds of reporters camp out in comfortable Israel. With its contentious society,
a free press, much of which is sharply
critical of Israel and Zionism, intellectual
elites who lean heavily to the left and are
well-connected internationally, these foreign reporters think they are tapping into
the heart of Israeli opinion and character,
when in fact they are getting a very skewed
version of both.
Forest Hill
prosthodontists
Language plays a huge part. Few foreign reporters working in the Middle-East
speak any of the region’s native languages.
Israeli political and intellectual elites
speak English, but journalists are heavily dependent on translators and “fixers”
to facilitate their information-gathering
on the Arab side of the story. And when
it comes to fixers there are no rules and
regulations. Fixers often give journalists
a laundered version of what is being said
in Arabic, which they naively accept without further interrogation – not that much
further interrogation is possible under the
circumstances. Reporters often do not say
what they are professionally bound to say:
“This information could not be corroborated by independent sources.”
Information on the Arab side is so
unreliable that Palestinians prefer intel
from Israel when it comes to their own
internal affairs. In one ludicrous story, a
Ha’aretz reporter detailed a planned coup
by Hamas on Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas discovered by Shin Bet in early August,
and passed on to Abbas. When the Palestinian president was scolded by Hamas
leader Khaled Meshal for accepting Israeli
information, Abbas replied, “I believe Israel’s reports.”
Israel is not blameless in allowing so
much media bias to metastasize with so
little strategic and systematic rebuttal.
Threads of arrogance, incompetence and
downright self-sabotage run through Israel’s communications history, and far too
little money and attention is lavished on
what should be the most sophisticated PR
Best wishes to our clients
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Meanwhile, Palestinian spokespeople
– usually articulate academics with significant experience in urbane media
performance – have always remained on
message.
While democratic Israelis confuse observers with open public dissension in
a clashing cacophony of views from left
and right, media-savvy Palestinians speak
with one unified anti-Israel voice. They
sidestep unpleasant questions and often
lie but they always appear reasonable.
They have been quite successful under
this assumption. Their narrative of a
people that has always been there and
has been displaced is simplistic and easy
to grasp. The Zionist narrative – a long,
convoluted account of wanderings and
changing identities, political negotiations
and treaties, legal texts and ancient documents, not so much.
Throw in a huge dollop of anti-Semitism – both latent and overt – in Europe,
fever-pitched anti-Semitism throughout
the entire Muslim world, enhanced communication tools online and via dedicated Islamism-laundering TV stations, and
an increasingly Israel-hostile United Nations – and we end up with entire Western
countries in which it is difficult to find a
single media outlet governed by real objectivity – let alone sympathy – when it
comes to Israel. ■
(Edited and excerpted from a speech presented Nov. 16 on behalf of the Canadian
Institute for Jewish Research.)
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Jewish Community Organizations, Synagogues and
Schools join our brothers and sisters in Israel
in wishing the community a Happy Chanukah
Adath Israel Congregation
Beit Rayim Synagogue
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Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue
Beth Tikvah Synagogue
Beth Torah Congregation
Canadian Associates of Ben Gurion University
Canadian Council of Conservative Synagogues
Canadian Friends of Bar Ilan University
Canadian Friends of Boys Town Jerusalem
Canadian Friends of Hebrew University
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Canadian Friends of the IGDCB (Israel Guide Dog
Center For The Blind)
Canadian Friends of Tel Aviv University
Canadian Hadassah Wizo - Toronto Centre
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City Shul
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Jewish Family & Child
Jews for Judaism
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Pride of Israel Synagogue
Reena, Batay Reena and Reena Foundation
Shaar Shalom Synagogue
Shaarei Shomayim Congregation
State of Israel Bonds
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The serious side of comic
2300 Lawrence Ave. E.
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Freda
Paula
Alan & Bethany,
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CHANUKAH
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By Robert Gluck
JNS.org
B
ecause he suffered a tough personal loss early in life, there has always
been a serious side to the comedy
of famed Jewish entertainer Billy Crystal.
Last year marked the 50th anniversary
of the death of Crystal’s father, prompting
him to perform the autobiographical oneman show 700 Sundays for another run
on Broadway. The show, which first ran in
2004 and earned Crystal a Tony Award in
2005, ran again until Jan. 5, 2014, at New
York City’s Imperial Theater.
In 700 Sundays, Crystal plays numerous
characters that have influenced who he
is today, from his youth in the jazz world
of Manhattan through his adult years.
Its themes – family and fate, love and
loss, and growing up Jewish – display the
multi-dimensional nature of a man mostly known for humour.
“The work he has created for stage, film
and television has made an indelible impression,” John Dow, vice-president of the
JFK Center for the Performing Arts, which
in 2007, awarded Crystal the Mark Twain
Prize for American Humor, told JNS.org.
“It is the work of not just a humourist but
also a humanist.”
Giving back is something Crystal takes
seriously. One of his most significant philanthropic endeavours is Comic Relief, and
he serves as MC for its fundraisers. Created in 1986 by comedy writer Bob Zmuda
to raise funds to help those in need, the
non-profit organization has raised more
than $50 million.
“I don’t consider myself qualified to
make an overall assessment of Mr. Crystal’s impact on comedy. I do know that
his impact on Comic Relief – the enduring success of its shows, its efforts to raise
public awareness about the homeless and
other pressing issues, and its fundraising
efforts – has been ineffable,” Mike Miller,
managing director of Comic Relief, told
JNS.org.
Born in Manhattan and raised in the
Bronx and Long Island by Jewish parents,
Crystal and his older brothers, Joel and
Richard, were the sons of Helen, a housewife, and Jack Crystal, who owned and
operated the Commodore Music Store,
founded by Helen’s father. The three
brothers entertained friends and family
by reprising comedy routines from such
greats as Bob Newhart, Rich Little and
Jewish star Sid Caesar, learning from records Jack brought home from the store.
With the decline of Dixieland jazz
around 1963, Jack lost his business and
died later that year at the age of 54 after
suffering a heart attack while bowling.
“He worked so hard for us all the time,”
Billy Crystal David Shankbone photo
Crystal wrote of his father in the 700 Sundays book. “He held down two jobs, including weekend nights. The only day we
really had alone with him was Sunday.
Sunday was our day for my two brothers
and I to put on a show and make them
laugh. And Dad would come in like three,
four o’clock on a Sunday morning after
working all weekend. Just as the sun came
up, I would tiptoe over to their bedroom,
which was right next to my room in the
back, and I would quietly open the door
just a little, and there they would be, Mom
and Dad, lying there, looking so quiet and
so peaceful together. And I would sit in the
doorway waiting for him to wake up, just
to see what we were going to do together
that day. I just couldn’t wait for Sundays.
I couldn’t wait for Sundays. He died suddenly when I was 15. I once calculated
that I had roughly 700 Sundays. That’s it,
700 Sundays. Not a lot of time for a kid to
have with his dad.”
Although loss is at the centre of 700 Sundays, Crystal keeps the mood lighthearted.
“There is loss everywhere – jazz dies, his
mom dies, neighbourhoods change, his
beloved Yankees decline and memories
fade. But Crystal, under Des McAnuff’s
tight direction, never gets maudlin,”
Mark Kennedy wrote for the Associated
Press. “He always knows when to dispel the darkness with a laugh, as when
he mimics the funeral director’s lisping
voice – ‘My condolenchess to the family
of the decheassed.’
That prompts Crystal to complain, ‘My
father’s dead, and I have to talk to Sylvester the Cat?’”
During a versatile career in the entertainment industry, Crystal has found success in front of the camera, as a performer in film and television, and behind the
scenes as a writer, director and producer.
DECEMBER 11, 2014
T
B33
Billy Crystal
DR. RICK KOCHMAN
would like to wish all my Patients
and Friends a
Billy Crystal, seated,
far left, on the cast of
Soap in 1977.
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In 1977, he became a regular on the
popular series Soap, playing the first
openly gay character on a network
television series. During the 1984
and 1985 television seasons, Crystal
earned national acclaim for his role
in Saturday Night Live. In 1997, he
created, wrote and produced the critically acclaimed HBO series Sessions.
A Grammy Awards host three times
and Oscar host eight times, Crystal
has starred in many hit films, among
them When Harry Met Sally, City
Slickers, The Princess Bride and Analyze This. His name is also well known
in Israel. In its 13th year, the Billy
Crystal Project for Peace through the
Performing Arts offers a wide range of
workshops to both Jewish and Arab
theatre artists and students, in a program aiming to create cross-cultural
understanding through the common
ground of theatre.
Crystal is not the first success story
in his Jewish family. His uncle, Milton
Gabler, led the way early on in Billy’s
life. Although he founded pioneering jazz label Commodore and later
became a legendary producer for
Decca, Gabler couldn’t read a note of
music or play an instrument. Instead,
as his nephew says on the DVD Billy
Crystal Presents the Milt Gabler Story,
Gabler’s accomplishments were almost solely a result of a “big heart
and a great set of ears.”
More of Crystal’s serious side comes
out on the DVD when he speaks
about Gabler’s courage in releasing
Billie Holiday’s controversial Strange
Fruit, a song many other labels
passed on.
“This wasn’t about making a hit,”
Crystal says. “This wasn’t about capitalism. This was about humanism.
This is about civil rights. Here was this
plump little Jewish guy who saw the
truth in those lyrics. And after everyone said they didn’t want to record
it – including John Hammond – Milt
said, ‘Let’s do it.’ So that’s part of his
character – do what’s right for people,
we’re all the same, and music makes
us more equal.” ■
SeeJN | Baycrest
menorah
Seniors from the Donald and Elaine
Rafelman Creative Arts Studio at
Baycrest brave a recent cold and
windy day to admire their finished art
– a colorful menorah that can be seen
in front of Baycrest’s main entrance
on Bathurst Street, Toronto. It will be
on display through the holiday season
for all to enjoy. Pictured, Baycrest
studio staff and volunteers join their
senior artists in front row, from left,
Julia Neagu, Bea Fink, Ginger Howard
Friedman and Bette Risen.
AMANDA PATERSON/BAYCREST PHOTO
Wishing all our
customers, family & friends
A HAppy CHAnukAH
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DECEMBER 11, 2014
The Wave sparks questions among Arabs and Jews
Linda Gradstein
Baqa Al-Gharbiye, Israel
B
y the end of its two-week tour,
thousands of Jewish and Arab Israeli high school students will have
seen The Wave, a play about a classroom
experiment that went too far, as students
became swept up in Nazi-style ideology.
Based on a true story, the English-language play by ADG, an English-language
theatre group based in Munich, was
warmly received by Israeli students, who
all study English in high school.
In the play, teacher Ben Ross tries to
motivate his high-school students by
starting a new movement called The
Wave, complete with banners, armbands
and slogans.
“Strength Through Discipline,” the students yell, while offering a Nazi-style salute, “Strength Through Community” and
“Strength Through Action.”
The movement gradually turns violent,
with students beating up anyone who is
not a member of the group. In one scene,
Laurie, one of the skeptical students, confronts Ross and asks him, “Did you hear
that a Jewish kid got beat up?”
For the Arab students watching the
play at the Al-Qasemi College in Baqa
Al-Gharbiye, the “oppressors” are the
Jews, while they, the Arab citizens of Israel, are the victims. While the 20 per cent
of Israel’s citizens who are Arab have full
voting rights, they have long complained
of institutionalized discrimination by
the Jewish majority. The current political
wrangling over a new bill to legislate Israel
as the Jewish nation-state has only intensified these feelings.
The hundreds of Arab high school and
college students crammed into the auditorium of the Al-Qasemi College in this
Arab town in northern Israel followed
the play closely. Although English is their
third language after Arabic and Hebrew,
the students were clearly engaged in the
action.
“I really enjoyed the play, and despite the
difference between our cultures, I got the
idea clearly,” Amir Qub, 16, told the Media
Line. “God gave us a conscience and a
brain to think, not just to follow anybody.”
The play comes amid growing tensions
between Israelis and Palestinians in east
The Wave is based on a true story.
Jerusalem over a site that is holy to Jews and
Muslims. Some of these students said the
play made them realize that Arabs and Jews
are fated to live together in the state of Israel.
“We’re living in Israel with Jewish people
and we must look at them as human, not
just a religion,” Islam al-Faruja, 17, told
the Media Line.
Continued on NEXT page
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“No one is better than the other, we are
equal. We are the same, with the same
God, living in the same land.”
The play is partly sponsored by the U.S.
Embassy in Tel Aviv. Some of the performances are for Jewish audiences, others
for Arab audiences, and some for mixed
groups of Jews and Arabs. Many Israeli
high school students read the book The
Wave as part of their English curriculum.
The actors interact with the audience,
who participate in the show by becoming
fictitious members of The Wave. At one
point, almost all of the audience members
were clapping along in rhythm during a
Wave rally.
The play is also emotional for the five
actors, four of whom are making their
first visit to Israel. The company is based
in Munich, Germany, and rehearsals took
place there and in London. The show
toured Norway before coming to Israel.
“I performed the same show with a different cast in Berlin,” Jean-Paul Pfluger,
who plays Ben Ross, told the Media Line.
“At the end of the rally, when I have the
line, ‘You would have made great Nazis,’
it obviously means something else in
Berlin.”
The Holocaust imagery is also potent in
Israel, where almost 200,000 Holocaust
survivors make their homes. One mem-
B35
T
ber of the cast, Adam Pelta-Pauls, 24, who
grew up in Potomac, Md., says it is an important piece for him.
“My grandparents were both survivors,
and it made it really personal for me really
quickly, especially rehearsing in Munich
and close to Dachau where so many of my
people were interred, lived and died in
horrible ways,” he said. “It gave me a personal hand in making sure something like
that doesn’t happen again. At the same
time, we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Pfluger said the theatre offers a chance
for Jews and Arabs to meet in a non-political space.
“The whole reason we perform the show
in Israel is as a means of a dialogue,” he
said. “A theatre is a neutral space that can
welcome both Arabs and Jews into the
same space, and hopefully it’s a really tiny
drop in the ocean [as we] work toward
some kind of resolution.”
Or you can take the reaction of college
student Heba Younes. “I think it’s an outstanding play, it was very awesome,” she
said enthusiastically. “The actors are really good and had so much emotion. I was
shocked that it was a real story.” n
The Media Line
Themedialine.org
SeeJN | Life-saving chanukiyah
Israel sun PHOTO
A young boy holds up a cardboard chanukiyah
resembling an Iron Dome.
On Behalf of the
Ontario Liberal Caucus,
best wishes to
the community
Happy
Hannukah!
Hon. Kathleen Wynne
Premier of Ontario
416-325-7200
Hon. Eric Hoskins
St. Paul’s
416-656-0943
Hon. Michael Chan
Markham-Unionville
905-305-1935
Mike Colle
Eglinton-Lawrence
416-781-2395
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York Centre
416-630-0080
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Richmond Hill
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Willowdale
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DECEMBER 11, 2014
Tasmanian synagogue started by British
SHIRLEY KELLERSTEIN
SPECIAL TO THE CJN
M
y husband Joe, was invited to
speak at the Australian Homeopathic Association Conference
in Hobart, Tasmania, in Australia, the
weekend of Oct. 24, the same weekend as
the Shabbos Project.
I was thrilled to discover that not only is
there a synagogue in Hobart, but it is the
oldest remaining synagogue in Australia.
I emailed the synagogue, and received a
response from Tony O’Brien, a volunteer.
He said there were no Shabbos Project
events planned, but he agreed to meet
with us, show us around and share some
synagogue history.
I learned beforehand that the synagogue had been built mainly because
of the efforts and generosity of a Jewish
ex-convict, Judah Solomon.
He and his brother, Joseph, success-
ful businessmen in England during the
Napoleonic wars were caught trading
stolen goods during the aftermath, a
period of unemployment, poverty and
crime. They were sentenced to death and
this sentence was commuted to transportation for life to the penal colony in
what was known at that time as Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania.
Unlike the majority of convicts, the
Solomon brothers arrived with their own
money and eventually, while still convicts, were able to start their own business. They did very well, expanding their
business and buying land. They were
given conditional pardons after 12 years.
Tony told us that Joseph was able to return to England but Judah remained in
Tasmania.
There have been free Jews in Tasmania since 1804. The early arrivals, as well
as the convicts were busy just trying to
survive. It was not until the 1830’s that a
Happy Chanukah
DAVID SHINER
COUNCILLOR,
CITY OF TORONTO
WARD 24 - WILLOWDALE
100 Queen St. West, Suite B39
Toronto, ON M5H 2N2
Phone: 416-395-6413
Fax: 416-397-9290
[email protected]
true Jewish community was forming and
the need for a permanent synagogue was
felt. Until that time, services were held at
various venues, one of which was Temple
House, the warehouse of Judah Solomon.
At the time, the governor was freely
giving land grants to build churches. He
refused, however, to give a land grant to
build a synagogue. Judah donated some
of his own land, on the same property as
his home.
As it turned out, the synagogue was
only three blocks from our hotel. We almost missed it. The building itself while
lovely, is very unassuming, sandwiched
between two other buildings. The rest
of the original property, after passing
through many hands was ultimately sold
to the city and is now the police station.
This we learned from Tony when I asked
why there was no security.
Tony was waiting for us. Of course, I had
to ask what a nice Jewish boy was doing
Best Wishes for a
Happy Chanukah
Hon. Carolyn Bennett, MD
MP for Toronto-St. Paul’s
1650 Yonge Street, Toronto
T: (416) 952-3990
E: [email protected]
@Carolyn_Bennett
HAPPY
CHANUKAH
on behalf of the
Mayor & Council of Richmond Hill
Mayor & Members of Council 2014-2018
Mayor Dave Barrow
Deputy Mayor/Regional & Local Councillor Vito Spatafora
Regional & Local Councillor Brenda Hogg
Ward 1 Councillor Greg Beros
Ward 2 Councillor Tom Muench
Ward 3 Councillor Castro Liu
Ward 4 Councillor David West
Ward 5 Councillor Karen Cilevitz
Ward 6 Councillor Godwin Chan
RichmondHill.ca
“Happy Chanukah”
to our Patients,
Friends and Family.
Wishing you
a Peacful and
Joyous Chanukah
T
convict
Synagogue volunteer Tony O’Brien in front of the Aron Kodesh (left) and greeting Shirley
Kellerstein at the synagogue (right). JOE Kellerstein photos
There has been free
Jews in Tasmania
since 1804
with the name Tony O’Brien. He told us
he is a convert, one of a few in the congregation. He is one of several members
who volunteers his time to give tours
of the synagogue. His official position,
for which he was trained by a rabbi in
Melbourne, is that of prayer leader and
he does so regularly. He was extremely
knowledgeable about the building itself
as well as its history and politics.
To me, the synagogue looked like a
typical Sephardi structure with the Aron
Kodesh at the front and the bimah in
the centre with the seats on three sides.
There was, of course a women’s gallery
upstairs. When I commented, Tony said
that it was designed in the Egyptian style
by James Alexander, a Scots convict who
had never seen a synagogue in his life.
It was beautiful: simple, with dark wood
benches and railings around the Aron
B37
Kodesh and the bimah, and a very old
brass chandelier which is very much in
need of refurbishing. The congregation
is, in fact, refurbishing the shul bit by bit.
Interesting enough, the Aron Kodesh
does not face Jerusalem and there is a
plaque on the wall indicating the correct
direction. I was totally confused about
directions in Australia.
The synagogue has some wonderful
treasures. It has a beautiful silver case
and the scrolls that were donated from
India in the early ‘50’s, but in fact are
thought to be Syrian in origin and very
old. There is also a Sefer Torah on display
which was one of many found in piles in
a Prague synagogue after World War II.
Very interesting to me as well was the
convicts’ bench where the Jewish prisoners were escorted in and guarded on
both sides by armed soldiers. It has been
turned into a bookshelf.
As with all old synagogues, there is a
special feeling and I can’t help but think
and try to tie things together in my mind.
So much of the history of Australia is
based on the struggles of the convicts. A
tour guide at the Port Arthur Penal Colony pointed out, “If the convicts survived
their sentence, 90 per cent of them became successful, upstanding citizens.”
Many people we spoke to could trace
their roots back to the original convicts. n
B38
T
DECEMBER 11, 2014
Island Jews: Barbados’ surprising Jewish history
JODIE SHUPAC
[email protected]
W
hite sand beaches, cerulean
skies and ribbons of lush palm
and mahogany trees: It may not
scream Jewish history, but Barbados is
steeped in it, with a Jewish presence dating back to the 1600s.
It’s also the unlikely site of the oldest
synagogue in the Western Hemisphere and,
because this year marked the shul’s 350th
anniversary, I was granted a week’s respite
from the Canadian winter and sent by the
Barbados Tourism Authority to write about
the island’s Jewish roots.
On a balmy November day interrupted
by sheets of aggressive rain, I visited Nidhe Israel, an elegant coral building originally built in Bridgetown, Barbados’ capital,
in 1654, and restored in 1983. A UNESCO
world heritage site, it’s adjoined by a Jewish
cemetery, a mikvah and a Jewish museum
that opened in 2008.
I was met by Celso Brewster, the museum
manager. A native Barbadian who recently
discovered he has Jewish ancestry on both
sides of his family, he showed me the crumbling tombstones of the island’s early Jews,
and the 17th-century mikvah, which, until
its excavation in 2008, had been buried beneath a pile of rubble.
“We’re very glad we have it,” Brewster
said, nodding at the synagogue. “It looks
small, but it has held over 300 people.”
From December to April – peak tourist season – Friday night services are held
there, often attended by Jews visiting from
elsewhere. During off-season, the local
community, consisting of just 16 families,
holds services in a house that was turned
into a Conservative shul in the 1960s.
While the Jewish presence in Barbados
is modest – there are 50-odd Jews to the
island’s total population of 300,000 – their
historical impact has been sizable.
Jews came to Barbados in two distinct
migrations: The first, arriving in the 1650s,
consisted of Sephardi Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition in Brazil.
They brought technological expertise
that advanced the burgeoning sugar cane
industry, but by the late 17th century, they
were no longer permitted to own slaves,
Nidhe Israel, located in Bridgetown, Barbados, is the oldest synagogue in the Western
Hemisphere. Jodie Shupac photos
Above, Celso Brewster, manager of the Jewish
museum, inside Nidhe Israel. Right, Paul Altman, at
his office in Bridgetown.
T
By 1750, Bridgetown’s
population of 10,000
included 800 Jews.
and they became merchants and shopkeepers. By 1750, Bridgetown’s population
of 10,000 included 800 Jews.
By the late 1800s, intermarriage, assimilation and emigration saw the Jewish community become virtually obsolete. In 1831,
Nidhe Israel was destroyed by a hurricane,
and, though rebuilt several years later, in
1925 it was sold and converted for commercial purposes.
The Jewish community was revived in the
1930s, this time comprised of Ashkenazi
Jews fleeing Europe. The community that
grew out of this in the ensuing decades had
little association with Nidhe Israel, and was
largely unconcerned when, in 1983, the
government slated the building for demolition.
It was Henry Altman, a prominent Barbadian Jew who’s since passed away, and
his son Paul, who took up the cause of salvaging the synagogue, leading to its restoration and re-consecration.
I met Paul, a successful real estate developer, former president of the Barbados
National Trust and grandson of the first Jew
to arrive in Barbados from Poland in 1931,
at his Bridgetown office.
“What got my father really upset was
that the government said they needed to
remove a piece of the Jewish graveyard,”
Altman recalled. “My wife and I went to the
Barbados museum and found pictures of
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B39
what the old shul had looked like… I took
the pictures to the then prime minister and
he said, ‘If you can find the money to restore
this, I will give it to the Jewish community.’
We said, ‘Done’…We have an obligation to
these people that are buried right there.”
The money Altman raised mostly came
from private donors, but he garnered support from international organizations like
the Commonwealth Jewish Council and the
World Jewish Congress.
Still, the local Jewish community hasn’t,
been overly “keen” about the restoration,
he said.
“They didn’t understand what the synagogue was like – how beautiful or important. They were used to the little synagogue
they’d been using, had no memories in the
old one. ‘Who are you doing this for? they
said. You’re wasting money and time.’”
Altman noted many have since come
around to the idea, but that rift hasn’t quite
healed.
“They still refer to it as ‘Paul’s synagogue,’”
he said.
Altman was evasive when I ask if it’s ever
lonely being a Jew in Barbados – one who
is, I can’t help wondering, somewhat estranged from the Jewish community itself.
“I don’t have to go to synagogue every Friday night,” he said firmly, “But if you take
the skin off me, you’ll find that 99.9 per cent
of what I’m all about is this tradition.” n
B40
T
HAPPY CHANUKAH FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT RIOCAN
DECEMBER 11, 2014

CHANUKAH GREETINGS - The Canadian Jewish News

Transcription

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