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bulletin volume 74, no. 13

april 26, 2010

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Eva Olsson tells her moving story at Ottawa’s Yom HaShoah commemoration

By Cynthia Nyman Engel Their Auschwitz captors ordered the new crop of female prisoners to strip. Most bundled their clothes in front of their bodies to cover their nakedness. Ester Malek, then 19, hung her clothes over her right arm.

“I don’t know why I did that, but I would not be here if I had not,” she said. “I didn’t know it then, but anybody with a blemish or scar was sent to the crematorium. I had had my appendix out just a few months before and, because I hung my clothes over my right arm, the scar was covered and I was spared.”

Holocaust survivor Eva Olsson, née Ester Malek, was the keynote speaker at Ottawa’s annual Yom HaShoah commemoration, held at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre on April 11.

Olsson was violently ill with raging typhus and dysentery when she was liberated from BergenBelsen on April 15, 1945. For the next 50 years, she kept silent about her ordeal until, in 1996, her grand-

daughter asked her to speak to her elementary school class. Since then, she has spoken to more than one million people in schools, churches, service clubs, police conventions and the Armed Forces. She has twice addressed the United Nations.

“We can sit in our living rooms and sit on our butts and wait for the end to come or do something about it,” said the 85-year-old survivor. “I knew I was free, but not from the memory of it. In this way, I keep my family’s memory alive. It is my healing hour.”

Olsson was one of six children born into a poor Chassidic family in Szatmár, Hungary. Of her extended family of 89, only she and a younger sister survived the death camps. In a riveting address, Olsson told it like it was. When she finished speaking, the 300 in attendance rose in a standing ovation.

April 9 and 10, 1944, were seder nights, said Olsson.

Truda Rosenberg lights one of the six memorial candles, each in memory of one million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, at Ottawa’s Yom HaShoah commemoration. Looking on are the other candle lighters (left to right) Gitta Aptowitzer, Cantor David Aptowitzer, Vera Kovesi, Agnes Klein and Barry Davis.

(Continued on page 2)

(Photo: Peter Waiser)

Survivors honoured at national Yom HaShoah ceremony

By Benita Baker Surrounded by tanks and historic fighter planes in the Canadian War Museum, nearly 500 people – politicians, dignitaries, Holocaust survivors, students and members of the public – gathered on April 12 for the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.

The theme of the 2010 event, “Voices of Survivors,” highlighted

the duty of survivors to impart the lessons of the Holocaust and the equally important duty of the next generation to implement those lessons, thereby linking the tragic past to the continuing promise of hope and renewal.

“The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that the Holocaust is never forgotten,” said Minister of State of Foreign Affairs

Peter Kent in his opening remarks.

Calling the extermination of Jews “a crime against all humankind,” Kent outlined Canada’s efforts at combating anti-Semitism and remembering the Holocaust, including joining the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Remembrance Education and Research, and refusing to participate in last year’s Durban II conference.

“Of course, we are unwavering in our support of the state of Israel,” said Kent.

Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff of the Liberal Party, as well as party leaders Jack Layton of the NDP and Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois, also addressed the crowd.

“It is an honour to be here in the presence of survivors who taught us

about the duty of remembrance, that beautiful word – zachor,” said Ignatieff, who closed his speech quoting, in Hebrew, the words of the prophet Isaiah.

Although sombre and emotional at times, the ceremony’s positive message of hope, renewal and future enlightenment prevailed. Education and children were at the (Continued on page 13)

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Page 2 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Olsson: ‘Hate is never OK’ (Continued from page 1)

Keynote speaker Eva Olsson speaks at Ottawa’s Yom HaShoah commemoration, April 11. (Photo: Peter Waiser)

“Hungary was already occupied. I remember when my mom lit the candles. She covered the windows so the Nazis wouldn’t see into the house. The seders were the last suppers we had together as a family.”

Within days, the family was marched into the ghetto.

They remained there until May 15, when they were herded into a boxcar for a four-day journey to Auschwitz.

“It was standing room only in the boxcar,” Olsson said wryly. “People started to die from lack of oxygen. I can still see my mom in a corner of the boxcar hugging three of her grandchildren.

With Auschwitz came Mengele, the stench of death and thick black clouds pouring from crematorium

smokestacks.

“I had heard of Poland before, but never of Auschwitz,” she said. “We had been told we would be working in a brick factory, but I said to my mom, ‘This doesn’t look like a brick factory.’”

Olsson can still hear the screaming and yelling of the prisoners forced into the gas chambers daily and how the screaming continued until an eerie silence followed, exactly 20 minutes later.

“That’s how long it took the Zyklon gas to do its work,” she said. “The kids were always found at the bottom of the pile, their little heads crushed by the bodies of the adults falling on them.

“I used to ask myself, ‘Who could do this? Animals?’ The answer is no.

People possessed by hate do this.”

The March on the Colours by the Jewish War Veterans of Canada, Ottawa Post, at Ottawa’s Yom HaShoah commemoration.

(Photo: Peter Waiser)

Olsson remembers the twice daily rations at Auschwitz – a slice of bread that was 70 per cent sawdust, a cup of black coffee, a mug of potato peel or turnip peel soup and, occasionally, the dreaded “surprise soup” in which swam bits of bone and tufts of human hair.

She remembers being force-marched in the freezing snow wearing only wooden shoes, no socks, no underwear. She remembers being stuffed into a root cellar with 500 other prisoners there to live with the stench of rotting straw, not daring to go out for fear of being bullied or raped.

She remembers BergenBelsen, where the dead and the living lay side by side on the barracks’ floors. And, she remembers going outside to see if there might be a better place to sleep, only to find hills and hills of corpses.

She remembers how the Nazis blew up the camp’s water supply a few days before the liberating forces arrived, so she tried to urinate on a rag for liquid to cool down her raging fever. She remembers other prisoners trying to drink their own urine.

“Water is something we take for granted, until we don’t have it anymore,” she said.

“Why did they not kill us?” she asked.

“Because they got joy out of watching us die … 500 every day. They stripped us of the things you cannot buy.

What you cannot buy is another family.”

Referring to her classroom visits, Olsson said the thing she always asks is how many use the word ‘hate’ every day.

“I explain that the word ‘hate’ must never be used.

It’s OK to say ‘I don’t like,’ but hate is never OK. The war ended in 1945, but genocide didn’t end because hate didn’t end. As long as there is hate, there will be genocide.

“The second question I ask is, “How do you get rid of bullies and bystanders?” she said. “In 1928, there were 300 Nazi bullies and, in short order, there were 300,000 Nazi bystanders.”

After liberation, Olsson

and her sister went to Sweden.

“The Swedes didn’t care what religion you were,” she said. “They treated us like members of their family – the human family.”

She married Rude Olsson and the couple immigrated to Canada in 1951. In 1964, her husband died from injuries sustained in a car accident.

In 2000, Olsson wrote her autobiography, Unlocking the Doors: A Woman’s Struggle Against Intolerance.

The Yom HaShoah commemoration began with the March on the Colours by the Jewish War Veterans of Canada, Ottawa Post, under Commander Sam Ages.

Shoah Committee Chair Mina Cohn requested a moment of silence in memory of the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife, Maria, who were killed the day before in a tragic plane crash. She also paid tribute to Lea Kalin, Fuzzy Teitelbaum and Penny Bar-Noy Roodman, former members of the committee who passed away during the past year.

Israeli Ambassador Miriam Ziv said it is our moral responsibility to learn the stories of the Holocaust and pass them along.

“We must take the threats of our enemies seriously,” the ambassador added.

Six Holocaust survivors – Cantor David Aptowitzer, Gitta Aptowitzer, Barry Davis, Agnes Klein, Vera Kovesi and Truda Rosenberg, assisted by Adina Steinman and Noam Steinman and with voice over by Michael Curry – lit candles in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Other participants included Carleton University student Chelsea Sauvé, who shared her reminiscences of the March of Remembrance and Hope; Cantor Shneur Bielak, who led O Canada and Hatikvah; and Rabbi Charles Popky, who delivered the D’var Torah. Cantor Aptowitzer, one of the candle lighters, chanted Kel Maleh Rachamim.

The March off the Colours brought the evening to a close.

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 3

Page 4 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Pro-Israel Carleton students attacked in Gatineau

By Justin Dahan Two Carleton students, well known as supporters of Israel, were allegedly assaulted and threatened with a machete in the early morning hours of April 5 following a night on the town in Gatineau.

Hours later, Nick Bergamini, a vice-president of the Carleton University Students Association, posted a note to his Facebook account called “The Cost of Supporting Israel,” describing the frightening incident he said he and another student had just experienced.

Bergamini, who is not Jewish, said he and his roommate, Israeli student Mark Klibanov, were leaving La Volt nightclub at 1:45 am, when they were greeted by shouts of “Zionist” and “Jews” in Arabic from a group of about 10 men.

One of the men, said Bergamini, hit him on the back of the head, at which point the pair returned to the safety of the nightclub.

After a 10-minute wait,

the two young men decided it would be safe to walk home.

“We were walking through a parking lot, when a car pulled up next to us. The driver shouted, ‘I (expletive) hit you, you Jew.’ “We stood our ground.

Quickly, we had three guys around us. We were able to push them away. As the cow-

ards that they were, they retreated. Then I heard shouts of ‘Open the trunk!’

“One of them opened the trunk and I saw glistening in the streetlight the reflection of a 12-inch machete. “‘(Expletive) Jew,’ he shouted. I began to run for my life, as he was only five or six feet away.”

While Bergamini is not Jewish, he stands by his avid support of Israel.

“I’m still going to be just as much of a supporter of Israel, maybe even more than ever, after witnessing what its enemies are,” he explained.

At the time of the attack, Klibanov was campaigning

for the position of president of the Israel Advocacy Committee (IAC) on campus.

“We believe that they recognized Nick or me. I thought the remarks were directed at Nick, but both of us … speak out and support Israel,” Klibanov told the Bulletin in an interview.

Klibanov became IAC

president on April 8 and says that trying to combat the antiIsrael sentiment that led to the Gatineau attack will be his first priority.

“Open dialogue with Palestinians [is] the best way to remedy the situation,” he said.

An investigation by the Gatineau police is ongoing.

Easy to forget, Sharansky tells March of the Living (JTA) – Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who now heads the Jewish Agency for Israel, led more than 10,000 people on the March of the Living in Poland on Yom HaShoah.

“We have come here today to remember. But it is easy to forget,” Sharansky said at the beginning of the march at the Auschwitz concentration camp on April 12.

“It is easy to say that the lessons of Auschwitz have been learned. It is easy to say those two magic words: Never again. The hard part is giving those words meaning.

That is our challenge. That is your challenge.”

Participants from 45 countries took part in the march. Black ribbons were attached to Israeli flags carried during the march as a demonstration of sympathy to the Polish people on the loss of their president and many of the country’s leaders in a plane crash on April 10.

A siren sounded throughout Israel for two minutes on Yom HaShoah in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Following the siren, memorial ceremonies began at Yad Vashem, where wreaths

were laid, and at the Knesset, which held a ceremony during which the names of Holocaust survivors were read.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his Yom HaShoah address at Yad Vashem to warn about the dangers of a nuclear Iran.

“We are witness today to the new-old fire of hate, hatred of Jews inflamed by organizations and regimes of extremist Islam, most of all Iran and its satellites,” Netanyahu said.

“Iran’s leaders are rushing to develop nuclear weapons and freely announce their desire to destroy Israel. But, before these repeated declarations to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth, at

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (JTA photo: Yossi Zamir / Flash 90)

best we hear faint protest, and even this is fading,” he said. “We don’t hear the forceful protest that is required, we don’t hear the strong denouncement, nor the angry voice.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres said that the Holocaust

is a lesson against all genocide.

“We have a right and a duty to demand of the nations of the world that they not repeat the indifference that cost millions of lives, including their own citizens,” Peres said.

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Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 5

Borovoy defends civil liberties at CFHU luncheon

By Diane Koven “I have long thought of ‘Israeli apartheid’ as an obscene expression. However, I would not propose that the university ban it,” said one of Canada’s leading and most venerable civil libertarians.

“We are entitled to hate nation states in this world and no one should have the right to tell us which nations we are entitled to hate and which we are not.”

Alan Borovoy, general counsel emeritus of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), was the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Passover luncheon presented by the Ottawa Chapter of Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (CFHU), April 1, at Congregation Agudath Israel.

“So, I find myself on the one hand repelled by the epithet, and on the other hand being obliged to defend the right of those students ... it is hard to be a Jew; it is doubly hard to be a Jew and a civil libertarian,” he said.

Borovoy was a most fitting choice to speak on Passover, the holiday of freedom.

As general counsel of the CCLA for more than four decades (he retired just a few months ago), Borovoy made presentations to public inquiries and testified before parliamentary committees on a variety of issues related to civil liberties. He has written widely in newspapers, appeared on radio and televi-

sion and published a number of books. Borovoy has lectured at several Canadian universities, has received several honourary doctorates, as well as other honours, and is an officer of the Order of Canada.

“Recurring Threats to Civil Liberties in Canada” was Borovoy’s topic, and he drew on his lengthy history as a civil liberties defender to cite examples of the difficulties in drawing the line between protecting the rights of

individuals and the rights of the public.

In a most engaging and even entertaining manner, Borovoy described how seemingly sensible Canadian laws can become ludicrous when not exercised with discretion.

For example, the Safe Streets Act states that one may not solicit money in certain public places. While the intention of the law was to prevent panhandling, the list of places where it is forbidden to solicit money includes

telephone booths and pay toilets. Although both have become rare in today’s world, Borovoy asked, rhetorically, “Is there anyone here who has not been at or near a pay telephone and run out of quarters?” He also suggested that if someone needed money for a pay toilet, it would be advisable to give it to him or her.

Borovoy pointed out that it is usually the least popular people in society whose civil liberties need protection.

“The fight for civil liberties requires of all of us a willingness to go to bat for someone else,” he said. “The important thing for us all is to be willing to go to bat, not to allow the unpopularity of the group or person to inhibit us if there is a serious infringement of that person’s liberty.

“The freedom of no one is safe unless the freedom of everyone is safe,” said Borovoy.

The CFHU’s annual Passover luncheon is an event

Notice of Annual General Meeting The Jewish Federation of Ottawa will hold its 76th Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 7:00 pm in the Social Hall of the Joseph and Rose Ages Family Building.

The entire Jewish community of Ottawa is invited to attend.

Alan Bororvoy speaks about civil liberties in Canada at the CFHU Passover luncheon, April 1, at Congregation Agudath Israel.

(Photo: Sylvia Klein)

What’s happening at

Section 17.1B of the by-laws state that “At least thirty (30) days before the annual general meeting, the board of directors shall send the Nominating Committee report to each Full Member and invite each Full Member to provide the President and Chief Executive Officer, at least fourteen (14) days before the annual meeting, the name of any additional candidates which he/she wishes to nominate, together with a letter of support from five (5) other Full Members of the Corporation and a statement by the candidate of interest and qualifications.”

Sunday, May 2

Tallit and Tefilin for families

The Board of Directors elected the following individuals to serve a term of two (2) years, ending June 2011, as members of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa:

Thursday, May 6

Kibbitz Club with Janie Respitz (singing traditional Yiddish folksongs)

Donna Dolansky Debbie Weiss Steven Kimmel Lisa Rosenkrantz

Congregation Beth Shalom

Friday, May 7

that many in the community look forward to from year to year.

For some, it represents an opportunity to go out for lunch in the middle of a week that would otherwise involve brown-bagging some crumbly matzo and a hard-boiled egg.

For others, the choice of speakers is the main appeal, as CFHU has become known for featuring an array of world-class speakers on a variety of topics.

Community Wide Shabbat Dinner

Watch for more upcoming events Everyone is Welcome!

For more information, please contact the synagogue at 613-789-3501 or info@bethshalom.ca www.bethshalom.ca

Chair Vice Chair

The following individuals are nominated to serve a term of two (2) years as members of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, serving to June 2012: Jacquie Levy Bonnie Merovitz

Phillip Stein Jennifer Kardash The Chair will appoint two (2) individuals to serve as members at large of the Board of Directors.

Ex-officio members of the Board of Directors include: Jonathan Freedman Immediate Past Chair Neil Zaret Chair of Jewish Community Campus Mitchell Bellman President and CEO The Full Members of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa include one representative of each funded agency; each of the Pulpit Rabbis; a representative of each community synagogue; a representative of every local Jewish community organization that is not a funded agency; and the Chair of the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation.

In addition, the Board of Directors will appoint fifteen (15) Full Members at Large within thirty days of the AGM. The Full Members are responsible for electing the Board of Directors and for approving the Strategic and Business Plans.

Please address any questions to Mitchell Bellman at 613-798-4696, ext 224 or at mbellman@jewishcottawa.com

Page 6 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Federation: Committed volunteers, dedicated staff and 24 partner agencies We all use the name of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, but how many of us think of what that Federation represents? What does it comprise?

I like to think of the Federation as the central umbrella organization of the Ottawa Jewish community, with the responsibility of representing all the Jewish organizations in Ottawa to the best of our ability.

The Federation comprises hundreds of committed volunteers, a group of dedicated professionals and 24 partner agencies.

Our mission is to “preserve and enrich Jewish life in the Ottawa area, Canada, Israel and overseas, by planning for the evolving needs of the community, raising and allocating funds for communal priorities, co-ordinating community action and representing the views of the community.”

With so many agencies and organizations under our umbrella, one of our ongoing challenges is to establish and maintain great inter-agency relationships and encourage partnerships. We can only thrive as

Federation Report Donna Dolansky Chair a community if we work together on a daily basis. This means that both the Federation and our agency colleagues need to work very hard to constantly improve and maintain good relations.

However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and our community is made up of people with many differing opinions. As in any relationship, there can be times of tension, but that is when both sides have to redouble their efforts to make things work “to preserve and enrich Jewish life in Ottawa.”

With an eye to enhancing our interagency relationships, some of the members of our Federation Board of Directors and I

will be setting up meetings with our major agencies in the next month or two. We hope to have fruitful discussions, both about the agencies’ activities and plans, and about improving the way we can help get their message out to the general Jewish public. We have also begun working on an agency e-newsletter to which agencies can submit material about specific issues and initiatives in which they are involved. The distribution of this e-newsletter will enable them to reach a wider audience and improve communication. We are always open to new ideas to make our Jewish community great!

As chair of the Federation, I did receive some surprising and very gratifying agencyrelated news recently. I received notification from the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge that the Federation was chosen as the recipient of their Outstanding Service Award, to be presented at the Hillel Lodge annual meeting on May 26. This award, which I was told was in recognition of the help and support that the Federation has

given to Hillel Lodge over the years, is, in a way, validation of our efforts at partnership and co-operation. We appreciate everything that Hillel Lodge and all our other agencies do on a daily basis to strengthen Jewish life in Ottawa.

Busy time People often ask me how busy I have become now that I am chair of the Federation. (Many also ask if I am enjoying it.)

My answer is always the same – the busyness comes and goes. (And, yes, I am enjoying it!)

The months of April, May and some of June are very busy. There are many community events this month, some of which would have already happened by the time this column is in your homes. However, I hope you take advantage of all the opportunities there are this spring for community, for Jewish learning and for just being together.

See you there!

Question of Jerusalem ‘defies easy solutions and inordinate political pressure’ The recent, and ongoing, brouhaha regarding Obama Administration attitudes toward construction in Jerusalem brings to mind a debate between the Rambam (Maimonides) and the Raavad (Rabbi Abraham Ibn Daud) concerning the status of the Temple Mount in Jewish law in contemporary times.

In Chapter Six of Hilchot Beit Habechirah, halachah16, Mishne Torah, the Rambam indicates that there is an intrinsic difference between the holiness of the Temple Mount in relation to other areas of Eretz Yisrael.

The Temple Mount has never lost its holiness despite the consecutive destructions of the two Batei Mikdash, as it is indeed a geographic area blessed by the Shechinah, the Divine Presence. In other words, whether the Temple stands or not on that holy ground, the sanctity of that place is forever maintained and upheld.

Other places in Eretz Yisrael are resanctified by those who migrate with Ezra from Babylonia to settle in those areas in the early period of the Second Temple.

From the pulpit Rabbi Howard Finkelstein Beit Tikveh Contrasting the Rambam’s approach is that of Rabbi Avraham Ibn Daud.

The Raavad indicates that the Temple Mount loses its initial holiness with the destruction of the Temples, and is only regenerated with the building of a new temple which has not as of yet occurred.

The salient difference between the approaches of the Rambam and the Raavad would be in regard to the question as to whether one may go up to the Temple Mount today. The Rambam would say no, while the Raavad would see no issue.

Obviously, neither the Rambam nor the Raavad could envision today’s vitriolic debate regarding the status of Jerusalem and, especially, the Temple Mount. It seems that

Letters welcome Letters to the Editor are welcome if they are brief, signed, timely and of interest to our readership.

The Bulletin reserves the right to refuse, edit or condense letters.

The Mailbag column will be published as space permits.

Send your letters to Michael Regenstreif, Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, 21 Nadolny Sachs Private, Ottawa, Ontario K2A 1R9; or by e-mail to bulletin@ottawajewishbulletin.com.

all eyes are focused on Jerusalem, despite the numerous crises and human rights violations in the world that receive little or scant attention.

One may excoriate American attitudes toward Jerusalem in light of present pressure brought to bear on the Netanyahu government. However, with only different nuances in style and personal brinksmanship, there is little that distinguishes, policy wise, the approaches of Obama from those of Carter or Bush I in regard to Jerusalem and related issues.

In truth, the question of Jerusalem is a vexing one that defies easy solutions and inordinate political pressure.

Perhaps, to paraphrase the Raavad, there will come a time when the status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount will undergo a spiritual transformation with the presence of God, revealed and revered forever.

As the Psalmist writes, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” especially as we approach Yom Ha’Atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim.

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Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 7

Campuses need to be places of dialogue, discussion and respect Many of you are reading this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin a few days after celebrating Yom Ha’Atzmaut – the anniversary of Israel’s independence – at Lansdowne Park’s Aberdeen Pavilion. The Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration – this year the 62nd – is always one of the biggest events of the year for Ottawa’s Jewish community and you might be wondering why you’re not seeing Yom Ha’Atzmaut coverage as you turn the pages.

Although this issue is dated April 26, it was actually printed on April 19, the day before the big party. So, watch for our Yom Ha’Atzmaut coverage in the May 10 issue of the Bulletin.

Yom Ha’Atzmaut, a day celebrated with great joy by Jewish communities around the world, is immediately preceded by Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s memorial day for fallen soldiers and for victims of terrorist attacks, and comes not long after Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), two days of great sorrow. We do have extensive Yom HaShoah coverage in this issue.

We also have a disturbing story about the alleged early-morning attack in Gatineau, earlier this month, on two Carleton University students who are prominent pro-Israel advocates on campus.

Incidents like that alleged off-campus attack, screaming matches on campus,

Editor Michael Regenstreif events like Israeli Apartheid Week and campaigns like BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), whose goals are to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel, are antithetical to the cause of peace because they polarize sides and stifle debate.

Our campuses need to be places of dialogue, discussion and respect.

I know that dialogue, discussion and respect work.

About 15 years ago, I was back at Concordia University in Montreal doing an MA in the political science department.

Concordia was still some years away from its infamous Netanyahu riot, and I participated in an advanced seminar course, which included extensive discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The students included Israelis, Canadian Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.

Those seminars took place not too long after U.S. President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chair Yasser Arafat together for that

memorable signing ceremony and handshake on the White House lawn. It was a time when we thought an end might be in sight to the conflict and a two-state solution might soon be achieved. The discussions also helped partisans and advocates representing all manner of perspectives achieve an understanding of the other, even to become friends.

While the peace promised back then by the Oslo Accords failed to materialize, the understanding created by such dialogue does a lot more to help pave the way to peace than does polarization and demonization of the other.

Toronto pride parade There’s an ongoing debate about whether the gay pride parade in Toronto should lose $200,000 in annual public funding because the parade has been used in recent years as a venue by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). There has been an editorial and flurry of letters on the issue this month in the National Post.

It always strikes me as bizarre that a group like QuAIA even exists. This marginal organization of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gendered) persons seeks to demonize and delegitimize the only country in the Middle East where someone can live an openly LGBT

lifestyle (and where some LGBT Palestinians have sought and received refuge).

Meanwhile, in California, San Francisco, with the active support of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the local Jewish federation, is currently celebrating Out in Israel, a four-week festival of Israeli LGBT culture that includes films, music, dance, literary events and lectures.

Harvey Brooks There’s a JTA article in this issue that talks about older North Americans who have made aliyah to Israel recently. As a music lover who has always paid attention to credits, the name of Harvey Brooks (né Harvey Goldstein), one of the people profiled, jumped out at me.

The article mentions that Brooks, a bassist, had played with Bob Dylan, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King.

But, just mentioning those names does not begin to tell the story of Brooks’ significance.

If his only credit was being the bass player on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” his position in music history would be secure. But, Brooks has a list of credits that includes playing on literally hundreds of the most important rock, folk, jazz and blues recordings of the past 45 years and in concert with many of the most important artists of the 1960s and since.

‘As living memory dims, the imperative to remember strengthens’ History isn’t always as distant as we sometimes imagine it to be.

Or maybe it is.

About 15 years ago, while researching something unrelated at the National Archives, I stumbled upon an old newsreel from 1945 that showed footage of a large parade, somewhere in the United States, shortly after the Allied victory in the Second World War. Among the marchers was a small group of elderly men, some in wheelchairs, all of them veterans of the American Civil War. The scene took me aback because it seemed incredible that there were still Civil War vets alive during the lifetime of my own parents, who were children when the newsreel was shot.

For me, the American Civil War seemed part of distant history. Book history. The Second World War, though, was more recent history. Living history.

I knew living, breathing, speaking people who had experienced the Second World War. There were veterans of that war in my family and in my community.

From an early age, I’d heard first-hand accounts from vets and from Holocaust survivors.

But the American Civil War? It seemed almost ancient, prehistoric even, by com-

Alan Echenberg parison. I looked it up, though, and there were still Civil War veterans alive well into the 1950s.

There were once people on this earth who lived through both the death of Abraham Lincoln and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.

To someone of my generation, the First World War is right on the frontier between book and living history. A great uncle I never met served in the Canadian Army during that war, but never saw combat.

From another branch of my family, my mother’s late aunt used to tell me stories of the maimed, vacant-eyed, youngerthan-they-looked veterans of the Great War who would wander the streets of Saint John, New Brunswick, after returning from the horrors of trench warfare in Europe. They frightened her as a child growing up there in the early part of the last century, and she still had vivid memories of them in her 90s.

At school, First World War vets occa-

sionally would talk to us on Remembrance Day. But they were already quite elderly by the time I was a kid – older than my grandparents. It was hard to picture the frail old men speaking at our school assemblies as young soldiers in the trenches of Passchendaele or Ypres.

The Second World War and Korean War veterans were younger and more accessible. Also, they fought in wars documented by relatively modern cameras, with clear and crisp pictures. The First World War was all old-fashioned photos and fuzzy, silent film footage.

Twelve years ago, on the 80th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the Canadian government brought 17 of that war’s veterans to France and Belgium to revisit old battle sites. At the time, there were several hundred Canadian veterans of the war still alive, most in their late 90s and early 100s. Many of those still around in 1998 had only seen action as underage soldiers near war’s end.

Just a few were strong enough to make the trip. It would be the last major official commemoration of the First World War involving so many living veterans.

Before they left for Europe, they gathered as a group in Ottawa with the family members who would accompany them overseas: septuagenarian children and 50-

year-old grandkids. I was lucky enough to interview a few of those vets for a TV program. Their war experiences were unimaginably horrific, and some still found it difficult to talk about them eight decades later.

Those veterans are all gone now. Book history. And the Second World War vets and Holocaust survivors who speak to my kids’ classes may seem as prehistoric to them as the First World War vets seemed to me as a kid. Someday soon, their living history will also become book history.

On April 9, I stood among thousands of onlookers in a cold drizzle at the National War Memorial during a ceremony commemorating Vimy Ridge Day. Officials made poignant speeches. A vintage First World War plane flew overhead.

Sixty-five doves – each one representing 10,000 of the 650,000 Canadians who served in the war – were released into the sky.

But, for the first time, there were no living witnesses in attendance. The last Canadian Great War vet died in February.

History can’t help but grow more distant. But, maybe, as the living memory dims, the imperative to remember strengthens.

Alan Echenberg is TVOntario’s Parliamentary bureau chief.

Page 8 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

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By Stephen Bindman Michael Shapiro has loaded and unloaded hundreds, if not thousands, of airplanes in 10 years of working for Air Canada. But few were as special as the plane he was on February 16 when Shapiro and several Air Canada colleagues flew to Haiti to deliver relief supplies to the earthquake-ravaged country.

They loaded a plane in Toronto, flew to Port-auPrince, unloaded for five hours and then flew back to Toronto with a plane full of refugees fleeing the devastated country.

Though the journey took less than a day, it is one he will never forget.

“It was special,” says Shapiro, 36.

“We weren’t there for very long, but it was quite an experience to help out. We were only part of the puzzle – it wasn’t as if we handed the supplies right into the hands of people in the streets. We had other organizations with us to ensure the supplies were handed to the proper people and distributed. But we still saw the direct impact of our work.

“I’m glad I had the ability to help with the airline, with the people I work with. It was also a good way to represent the country. That Maple Leaf travels around the world and everyone knows who we are.”

The plane was packed to the rafters, including every unoccupied seat, with supplies such as diapers, toilet paper, water, baby food and medicine.

It was the sixth Air Canada flight to Haiti and Shapiro had, days earlier, sent a note offering to volunteer.

At the Haitian airport – with cracks from the earthquake still visible – they landed with a thud and were greeted by members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

“I said to one of the soldiers, ‘I’m happy you are doing what you are doing

Michael Shapiro

and I support you.’ He said, ‘Thank you for being here too. You are helping out as well.’

“When you see the Canadian flag on the uniform and you know they are on our side … that’s a good feeling.”

Shapiro says, “I’d go back tomorrow.”

Indeed, he was watching the Chilean earthquake on TV when his young son Benjamin, 5, quipped, “I guess you’re going there too, huh Daddy?”

Michael’s wife, Nikki, and his mother, Carol-Sue, were not surprised by his generosity.

An active member of Beth Shalom, Michael regularly recites the Haftorah on Shabbat and davens Pseukei D’Zimrot on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“Tikkun Olam has been a great part of Michael’s Jewish upbringing from an early age,” says Carol-Sue. Whether as a youngster helping the older congregants of Beth Shalom walk

home from shul, volunteering at the Ottawa Food Bank or helping fallen skaters on the Rideau Canal as a skate patroller, Michael always understood the meaning of community service, she says.

“When Michael announced that he had volunteered once again by helping people in the Third World, in the earthquake devastated Haiti, as his parents, we weren’t surprised. We are very proud of our son.”

Nikki, executive director of Congregation Beth Shalom, says Michael’s definition of tzedakah is not measured by the size of the donations he makes.

“His thing is to show his family how good it makes you feel to do the right thing and he is constantly doing that in the small things. I think this was another prime example of an opportunity that he took to show his kids that it’s important to do things for others. That’s important to him and it ties into the Jewish way he was brought up.”

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 9

Making aliyah in the golden years, an adventure, a dream fulfilled

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By Dina Kraft TEL AVIV (JTA) – In 1948, Harold Levine of Brooklyn was rumbling through Israel’s Negev Desert in a mobile dental clinic servicing recruits of the fledgling Israeli army.

He did not know it would take him more than 60 years to fulfil his dream of making the country his home.

Last December, Levine finally made aliyah. Now 85 and living in Jerusalem, Levine is one of a growing category of immigrants from North America: senior citizens. Some, like Levine, nurtured Zionist dreams of living in Israel over a lifetime and have refused to let age get in the way of that vision. Motivating many is an additional bonus: joining children and grandchildren who already have moved to Israel.

“It’s very exciting and fulfilling to be here, and I’m enjoying the process of getting settled,” said Levine, whose two sons and their families live here. “It’s another adventure.”

It’s not his first here. The now-retired orthodontist helped smuggle weapons, including rifles and handguns, and primitive radar equipment for the Jewish fighting forces onto the freighter he sailed here on in 1948.

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North American immigration to Israel, says it has seen a gradual rise over the past four years in the number of older people making aliyah from North America.

Joy Epstein, clinical supervisor for Nefesh B’Nefesh’s department of social services, which counsels seniors before they arrive on how to choose where to live, their finances and how to navigate the Israeli medical system, says these immigrants come from a range of financial backgrounds, ranging from the wealthy to those dependent on social security cheques. The recession has played a role in the decision of some to make aliyah, she said.

“There are those who decide that, if they are going to live with a measure of financial insecurity, it might as well be in Israel, where they have long wanted to live.”

Once here, older olim tend to tap into a rich cultural scene of concerts, classes and travel, often geared specifically for English speakers, Epstein said.

Many enrol in Ulpan Hebrew-language classes. One Ulpan in Jerusalem caters to older English-speaking olim, who meet for classes three times a week for almost a year.

Among the recent ar-

rivals to Israel is Harvey Brooks, 65, a well-known bass guitar player who once played alongside such musical legends as Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and B.B. King. He says he caught the Zionist bug from his wife of 21 years, who for years took her daughters to Israel on backpacking trips and whose eldest daughter now lives here.

Through repeated visits, he became comfortable in Israel, and, last summer, he and his wife made aliyah from Tuscon, Arizona.

“I’m very relaxed here.

I’m with my people,” Brooks said.

Although he is not religious, Brooks said he feels spiritually connected to Ju-

daism after long years where he felt music was his only religion. He’s been checking in with the local Israeli music scene, meeting musicians, and he’ll be performing at a well-known club next month.

His wife, Bonnie, who continues to work in film production and had contemplated aliyah earlier in life, said they embraced the idea together of making such a big change.

“When it comes to deciding how to spend your last 25 years, what do you have to lose?” she said.

Miriam Pollak and her husband, both Holocaust survivors, are also in Israel after a long and patient wait.

(Continued on page 14)

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Page 10 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Resnick crosses Canada with the Olympic Torch Relay

By Benita Baker For the 12,000 runners and hundreds of organizers who played a key role in the Canadian Olympic Torch Relay, the largest domestic torch relay in history, a treasured and enduring memory has surely been created.

For 24-year-old Ottawan Ben Resnick, the memory is doubly unforgettable. Not only was he part of the organizing team that drove across Canada ensuring that the relay progressed without a hitch, he was also a runner who carried the torch for 300 metres down Carling Avenue in Ottawa.

“It was more than I could ever have dreamed of,” said Resnick of the experience.

For 106 days and thousands of kilometres, Resnick was all-consumed with the smooth transition of the

Olympic torch across Canada. Remember all those heartwarming and patriotic moments broadcast daily on television – the cheering crowds, the uplifting stories and the nationalist pride?

They were made possible, in large part, by the work of Resnick and the 13-member RON (rest/overnight) team who made sure that the hotel, food and logistics were in place for the numerous runners and personnel who passed through each city.

“I have always been a huge fan of the Olympics,” said Resnick. “I pinched myself every day. Here I was with the Olympic flame, seeing the cheering crowds and hearing the phenomenal personal stories. It was nonstop, constant energy.”

Resnick’s Olympic adventure began when the Dal-

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Ben Resnick (right) is congratulated by cousin Zack Resnick after carrying the Olympic Torch along Carling Avenue on December 12, Day 44 of the Olympic Torch Relay.

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housie University business management graduate applied to the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) for several different jobs. When a VANOC member called to interview him over the phone for the torch relay position, he didn’t even remember applying for it. He was given the job on the spot and, in early September, was flown out to Richmond, BC for training.

“There was an instant

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family atmosphere when I arrived,” he said. “I knew immediately this was going to be something special.”

At first, he mostly worked behind the scenes in each location, so his first day on the road stands out.

“I was in the media truck driving through Trois-Rivières,” said Resnick. “I saw the people, the smiles, the cheering, and I thought ‘This is really happening.’”

Everywhere they went, the relay organizers were like superstars. Everyone wanted to talk to them, to hear their travel stories and to tell their own stories about a friend or a loved one with a torch connection.

“Everyone you met had a story about the relay,” said Resnick. “Their eyes would light up as they talked to you.

I was constantly reminded of the good nature and spirit of man – the generosity, the perseverance, the training, and the kind acts. Everyone came together for one thing. You can go a whole lifetime and not hear a fraction of the stories I heard.”

When passing through Brantford, Ontario, an ordinary breakfast at a local restaurant turned into a terrific memory when members of team RON were joined by Walter Gretzky.

“He was the nicest, most genuine guy,” said Resnick.

“He spent two hours talking to us about hockey, junior hockey, touring with kids and his life. I think he only mentioned Wayne twice.”

As the torch made its way across Canada, there were times when pre-selected torch bearers could not make their run. Sometimes, these spots were given to the organizing team, but, as much as Resnick wanted to carry the torch in his hometown, he didn’t dare raise his hopes.

When his boss called him with the news that he had been selected as a torch bearer, the otherwise talkative and outgoing Resnick was silent.

He describes running with the torch as “surreal.” The route was marked in advance with orange markers and a small group of runners was driven to the individual start locations. As they exited the bus, they were announced to the crowd of onlookers. The cheering began and the cameras flashed.

“It is your own special moment,” said Resnick, who ran 300 metres east on Carling Avenue from the Queensway underpass at Kirkwood. “I never wanted it to end.”

Seeing his friends and family cheering him on and running alongside him was especially exciting. The video he received afterward was proof.

“I had this enormous smile on my face, a grin from ear to ear,” he said. “I still can’t believe I did it.”

With the Olympic experience now indelibly etched in his memory, it is time to move on, to become a just a ‘regular guy’ again. But Resnick wants to continue sharing the pride he felt as well as the symbolism and meaning of the Olympics.

Each runner had the option to purchase his or her torch, and Resnick has loaned his torch and uniform, and those ohso-recognizable red mittens, to the Ottawa Jewish Archives. They will be exhibited in the Archives display cabinet – on the second floor of the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, near the Greenberg Families Library – during May, June and July.

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 11

Schacter describes her experiences living with OCD

By Sharon Reichstein for Na’amat Canada Ottawa Members and friends of Na’amat Canada Ottawa celebrated International Women’s Day, March 8, listening to speakers Alyse Schacter and her mother, Shereen Benzvy Miller, talk about Schacter’s experiences living with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

The duo’s talk, “Navigating Mental Illness Without a Map: Women as Advocates,” enthralled the audience of multigenerational women who listened with empathy.

An accomplished, warm and caring young woman of 19, Schacter captured the hearts of every listener in the room as she verbalized how differently her brain works as a result of OCD. “I know that my obsessions and compulsions are not rational, but I also know that I have absolutely no control over them” explained Schacter.

“I’ve tried everything from medication to therapy and counselling, but I have what’s called ‘treatment-resistant OCD,’ so I hear the phrase ‘we don’t know

Alyse Schacter (right) and her mother, Shereen Benzvy Miller, talked about living with OCD at Na’amat Canada Ottawa’s International Women’s Day gathering.

how to help you’ a lot.”

When Schacter was 13, her OCD became debilitating. At one

point, she was physically unable to get from her locker to class because she was afraid of stepping

on a floor crack. She was subjected to ridicule as her peers simply did not understand her odd behaviour.

Schacter’s parents decided to educate the students in their daughter’s class about OCD and the experience changed their daughter’s life.

Once the students understood the disease, they realized how they could support their classmate.

Friends began taking turns piggybacking Schacter to class.

For the past six years, Schacter has found that the best way to manage her illness is to tell everyone she meets about her condition and suggest ways friends can help her cope with everyday challenges.

She now speaks to groups of school children and has made it her mission to educate young people in order to break the stigma associated with mental illness.

Schacter recently won the Inspiration Award from the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health.

Benzvy Miller talked about her journey as a mother of a child with mental illness and urged the audience to stand up for their beliefs,

even when people put up roadblocks along the way.

She encouraged mothers in the room to rely on their maternal instincts, to protect their children and be persistent with medical professionals. She also reminded the group of the importance of looking at the big picture, that it is important not to let feelings of loss or disappointment eclipse life’s joy.

“I’m so grateful that I have a beautiful, caring and intelligent daughter who wakes up every morning with a smile, ready to live another day to its fullest,” said Benzvy Miller.

Both speakers encouraged the audience to make positive choices in their own lives, to do their part in their community and take steps to change the world for the better.

Their lesson was clear: one can choose to sulk when faced with a barrier, or one can choose to overcome life’s obstacles and strive for a better life. Both mother and daughter have made a clear choice to live life to its fullest.

Na’amat Canada is a women’s organization dedicated to enhancing the life of women and children in Israel and Canada.

55th ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING The Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge / Ottawa Jewish Home for the Aged The Joseph and Inez Zelikovitz Long Term Care Centre, 10 Nadolny Sachs Private

WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2010 - 7:00 pm Members of the Lodge and Community, Residents, Families, Staff and Volunteers are welcome to attend

BUSINESS AGENDA Annual General Meeting • Adoption of Annual General Meeting minutes – May 27, 2009 • Business Arising – from previous AGM, May 27, 2009 • Greetings from the Jewish Federation of Ottawa • Approval of actions taken by the 2009/2010 Board • Treasurer’s Report – A. Freed

• • • • •

Appointment of the Auditors 2010 Appointment of the Signatories 2010/2011 Report of the Nominating Committee – I. Levitz Election of incoming Board 2010/2011 Election of Officers 2010/2011

• • • • • •

Program – Award Winners 2009/2010 – I. Levitz Thank you to Long Service Staff – S. Schneiderman Medical Director’s Report – Dr. D. Levine Report of the President – J. Miller Executive Director’s Report – S. Schneiderman Thank you to outgoing President – S. Mender

BOARD OF DIRECTORS - 2010/2011 NOMINATIONS Susan Heisel Esther Kwavnick

(2) (2)

* ( ) denotes term of office

RETURNING Robert Dale Alan Freed Estelle Gunner Russell Kronick

(1) (1) (2) (2)

Michel Lipski Seymour Mender Jeff Miller Jason Moscovitz Karen Osterer

(2) (2) (2) (1) (2)

Cindi Resnick Stephen Saslove Issie Scarowsky Ozzie Silverman

(2) (2) (2) (2)

BOARD APPOINTEES: Auxiliary Representative • Hillel Lodge Long-Term Care Foundation Representative

EXECUTIVE Past President - Jeff Miller President - Seymour Mender

1st Vice-President - Russell Kronick 2nd Vice-President - Ozzie Silverman

Treasurer - Alan Freed Secretary - Issie Scarowsky Member-at-Large - Estelle Gunner

PAST PRESIDENTS Jeff Miller Ingrid Levitz Anna Telner Wex Morris Kimmel Eric Weiner Melane Hotz Shlomo Mayman Irving Greenberg z”l Noreen Bosloy Dr. Irwin Pencer Lillian Kimmel z”l

Dennis Newton z”l Sylvia Goldblatt z”l, M. Sidney Green z”l Theodore Metrick z”l Dan Doctor Dr. M. Ralph Berke z”l Ben Levin z”l Dr. Joseph Greenblatt z”l Samuel Berger z”l Judge J.C. Horwitz z”l Dora Lithwick z”l

FURTHER NOMINATIONS: Additional nominations may be made by any member in good standing of the Corporation. Such nominations may be made at any time up to fifteen (15) days prior to the date fixed for the Annual General Meeting, by mailing the same to the above address, attention: Ingrid Levitz. All such nominations must be in writing and signed by the nominee and by at least twenty (20) members in good standing of the Corporation.

2009/2010 AWARD WINNERS: Thelma Steinman Direct Service Award – Joel Diener • Shalom Perel President’s Award of Merit – Ginsberg, Gluzman, Fage and Levitz • Outstanding Service Award – Jewish Federation of Ottawa

Refreshments to Follow

Page 12 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

In support of the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge In the Joseph and Inez Zelikovitz Long Term Care Centre Card Donations Card donations go a long way to improving the quality of life for our residents. Thank you for considering their needs and contributing to their wellbeing.

On behalf of the residents and their families, we extend sincere appreciation to the following individuals and families who made card donations to the Hillel Lodge Long-Term Care Foundation between March 18 and April 7, 2010 inclusive.

HONOUR FUNDS Unlike a bequest or gift of life insurance, which are realized some time in the future, a named Honour Fund (i.e., endowment fund) is established during your lifetime.

By making a contribution of $1,000 or more, you can create a permanent remembrance for a loved one, honour a family member, declare what the Lodge has meant to you and/or support a cause that you believe in.

A Hillel Lodge Honour Fund is a permanent pool of capital that earns interest or income each year. This income then supports the priorities designated by you, the donor.

Ruth and Irving Aaron Family Fund In Memory of: Pearl Moskovic by Joan Katzeff, Janet Cohen, and Andra, Merle and Joel Ginsburg Bill and Leona Adler Memorial Fund In Memory of: John Krongold by Marilyn Adler, Neil and Daniel Blacher Elsie Baker Endowment Fund In Memory of: Beloved father of Andrew Stalony by Polly and Jack Moran Tania Firestone Family Fund In Honour of: Bob Firestone Best wishes for a very happy 50th birthday by Melissa and Ian Shabinsky; Susan and Michael Rapp; Sharon Baker; and the Cormiers Friedberg and Dale Families Fund In Memory of: Penny Bar Noy Roodman by Elaine Friedberg and Bob Dale Conrad Cohen by Elaine Friedberg and Bob Dale Solange Ohana Sandler by Elaine Friedberg and Bob Dale In Honour of: Janice and Ed Fine Mazal tov on Shelly and Michael’s engagement and upcoming marriage by

Elaine Friedberg and Bob Dale R’fuah Shlema: Lily Feig by Elaine Friedberg and Bob Dale Martin and Thea Ginsburg Memorial Fund In Memory of: Joy Ostrega by Andra Ginsburg Nell Gluck Memorial Fund In Honour of: Sandra Appel Mazal tov and best wishes on your milestone birthday by Julia, Ted and Jess Overton Nancy Borer Mazal tov and best wishes on your birthday by Julia, Ted and Jess Overton Manny Gluck Mazal tov on Zusha’s engagement and may you have continuing nachas from your grandchildren by Maureen and Henry Molot; and Julia, Ted and Jess Overton Maureen and Henry Molot Mazal tov on the birth of your granddaughter Neshama Yehudit (Charlotte Abigail). May you have much joy from her by Julia, Ted and Jess Overton Jess Overton Baruch Hashem for the first Pesach celebration with our son Jess in Israel by Julia and Ted Overton Alti and Berel Rodal Mazal tov on Ariel’s engagement to Leslie Spieler and may you have much nachas from the young couple by Maureen and Henry Molot Connie and Gerald Steinberg Mazal tov on Yael’s engagement and may you have much nachas from the young couple by Maureen and Henry Molot, Edie and Shahar R’fuah Shlema: Joe Miller by Julia, Ted and Jess Overton Morris and Lillian Kimmel Family Fund In Honour of: Morris Kimmel With much appreciation and wishing you a happy and healthy Pesach by Sylvia and Charlie Levine Bill and Phyllis Leith Family Endowment Fund In Honour of: Lila Nathans and Len Polsky Mazal tov and best wishes on the births of your granddaughter and grandson by Arlene and Seymour Isenberg Anna and Hymie Rabinovitch Mazal tov and best wishes on the birth of your granddaughter by Arlene and Seymour Isenberg Irma and Harold Sachs Family Fund In Memory of: Rita Ryant by Irma and Harold Sachs

Gordon Viner by Irma and Harold Sachs In Honour of: Shirley Westeinde Congratulations on receiving the Order of Canada, a well deserved honour

by Irma and Harold Sachs Stephen and Debra Schneiderman Family Fund In Memory of: Penny Bar Noy Roodman by Debra and Stephen Schneiderman Beverly Levitt by Debra, Stephen, Stacey and Jordon Schneiderman Rita Ryant by Debra and Stephen Schneiderman Skulsky Family Memorial Fund In Honour of: Carolyn Katz Congratulations on receiving a volunteer award by Bunny and Sam Halpern Ralph and Anne Sternberg Memorial Fund In Memory of: Dorothy Mendelsohn by Laya and Ted Jacobsen In Honour of: Cheryll Dancey and family Congratulations on the birth of your baby girl Peyton. May she live a healthy and happy life with love by Bubby Laya and Zaidy Ted Jacobsen Archie and Lillian Taller Memorial Fund In Honour of: Morris Kimmel Wishing you and yours a happy and kosher Passover by Gaye and Joel Taller and family Bert Palmer Thinking of you and wishing you a very happy birthday and many more by Sally and Morton Taller Carole and Norman Zagerman Family Fund In Memory of: Al Cohen by Carole and Norman Zagerman Polly Cohen by Carole and Norman Zagerman Terry Gavsie by Carole and Norman Zagerman Pearl Moskovic by Carole and Norman Zagerman Doris Segal Kutner by Carole and Norman Zagerman In Honour of: Ruth and A. J. Freiman Mazal tov and best wishes on Arielle’s engagement by Carole and Norman Zagerman Cookie Krantzberg Mazal tov and best wishes on your special birthday by Carole and Norman Zagerman Linda and Ken Mirsky Mazal tov and best wishes on your 50th anniversary by Carole and Norman Zagerman Maureen and Henry Molot Mazal tov and best wishes on the birth of your granddaughter by Carole and Norman Zagerman Rickie Saslove Thinking of you and wishing you well by Carole and Norman Zagerman

Feeding Program In Memory of: Penny Bar Noy Roodman by Mara and Isaac Muzikansky Rachel Dynkin by Mara and Isaac Muzikansky In Honour of: Sue Potechin Best wishes and good luck in your new career move by Mara and Isaac Muzikansky Anna and Hymie Rabinovitch Mazal tov on the birth of your granddaughter, Korey by Mara and Isaac Muzikansky ********** IN MEMORY OF: Penny Bar Noy Roodman by Zelaine and Sol Shinder; Diane Koven; Esther, Ariella, Marissa and Nathan Cepelinski; and Beryl and Michael Corber Abraham (Al) Cohen by Evelyn and Issie Hoffman; Cynthia and Herb Cowan; and Morley Goldfield and family Polly Cohen by Sara Shabsove; Zahava and Barry Farber; Lisa and David Brooker and family; and Cynthia and Herb Cowan Sandra Hershenkopf by Andrea and Michael Malek and family Estelle McCarthy by Rhonda and Danny Levine and family Pearl Moskovic by Nancy Pleet and Evan Pleet Morton Roodman by Dee and Yale Gaffen; and Yolanda McCay Rita Ryant by the Residents, Board and Staff of Hillel Lodge; Ron Stein; Helen Rosenthal; and Sara Shabsove William Senman by Zahava and Barry Farber Jerry Taylor by Zahava and Barry Farber Gordon Viner by the Residents, Board and Staff of Hillel Lodge; and Morley Goldfield and family IN HONOUR OF: Barb and Len Farber Wishing you a happy and healthy Passover by Cila Farber Mary and Izzy Farber Wishing you a happy and healthy Passover by Cila Farber Zahava and Barry Farber Wishing you a happy and healthy Passover by Cila Farber Malka Feig Wishing you a happy and healthy Passover by Cila Farber Libby and Stan Katz Wishing you a happy and healthy Passover by Cila Farber Gizela Klein Best wishes for a happy and healthy birthday by Helen Rosenthal Felice, Jeffrey, Erin, Jordan, Zachary and Mitchell Pleet In appreciation for your hospitality and a great Seder and wishing you a happy and healthy Passover with love by Mom and Dad Janice Pleet and Jonah In appreciation for your hospitality and a great Seder and wishing you a happy and healthy Passover with love by Auntie Sylvia and Uncle Morton Pleet The Foundation would like to thank Rose and Morrie Konick for a very generous donation

THE LODGE EXPRESSES ITS SINCERE APPRECIATION FOR YOUR KIND SUPPORT AND APOLOGIZES FOR ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS. DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS, THE WORDING APPEARING IN THE BULLETIN IS NOT NECESSARILY THE WORDING WHICH APPEARED ON THE CARD. GIVING IS RECEIVING – ATTRACTIVE CARDS AVAILABLE FOR ALL OCCASIONS Here’s a good opportunity to recognize an event or convey the appropriate sentiment to someone important to you and at the same time support the Lodge. Card orders may be given to Debra or Rhonda at 613-728-3900, extension 111, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm Monday to Thursday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm Friday. You may also e-mail your orders to donations@hillel-ltc.com. E-mail orders must include name, address, postal code, and any message to person receiving the card; and, amount of donation, name, address and postal code of the person making the donation. Cards may be paid for by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Cheque or Cash. Contributions are tax deductible.

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 13

Rips: ‘Our children must never become indifferent’ (Continued from page 1)

forefront of many remarks and many of the ceremony’s proceedings.

A group of elementary and high school students, along with their teachers, travelled from various cities to attend the ceremony. The teachers, who had all completed Holocaust education seminars at Yad Vashem, spoke of the difference between the things we remember in our heads and the things we remember in our hearts.

Ian Jones, an educator from Milton, Ontario, had just returned from taking a group of 25 students to Auschwitz.

“That is when the story made the journey from their head to their hearts, and I am convinced it will change their lives forever,” said Jones.

In an especially poignant moment, the students, holding yellow flowers, walked to the stage and laid their flowers on the ground, signifying the commitment of future generations to continue

carrying the lessons of the Holocaust forward.

In another moving and symbolic event linking past and present with Jewish tradition, Jesse Gorman, a student from United Synagogue Day School in Toronto, blew the shofar with Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka. (See photo on page 15.)

Speaking on behalf of all Canadian survivors, Paul Henri Rips stressed the duty to remember and to not give up hope.

“If we lose faith in humanity, then what is the point of bearing witness,” said Rips. “So, we must speak.

We who have seen our families, our communities and our nation almost eradicated have not given up hope. Despite everything I have lived through, I have faith in mankind. I have faith in the children and the generations to come. Our children must never become indifferent.”

As a tribute to survivors, and a symbolic gesture of good surpassing evil, all of

Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka delivers the D’var Torah at the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.

(Photo: Peter Waiser)

the invited dignitaries – including foreign ambassadors, cabinet ministers, MPs and senators – stood up and presented a yellow flower to a survivor seated nearby.

The afternoon’s events also featured a candle lighting ceremony.

Kent lit the first candle in memory of the six million Jews murdered in the

Cantor Moshe Kraus chants Kel Maleh Rachamim at the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.

(Photo: Denis Drever)

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Ignatieff lit the second candle in honour of the Righteous among the Nations who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

The third candle, lit by Rips, honoured all Holocaust survivors.

The fourth candle was lit

by Duceppe and was dedicated to the Allied forces, ghetto fighters and partisans who fought the Nazis.

Layton lit the fifth candle in memory of the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust.

The final candle, in honour of future generations, was lit by Israeli Ambassador Miriam Ziv, along with Jewish Federation of Ottawa President Mitchell Bellman, Federation Chair Donna Dolansky, and other representatives of the Zachor Coalition, a group of 26 organizations from across Canada that worked with the Canadi-

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an Society for Yad Vashem to organize the ceremony.

The Azrieli Foundation, which established the Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs program to preserve and share the written memoirs of survivors who settled in Canada, gave each attendee a memoir.

Other highlights of the afternoon included the moving

chanting of Kel Maleh Rachamim and Kaddish by Cantor Moshe Kraus, a Holocaust survivor, the D’var Torah given by Rabbi Bulka, a video created by Yad Vashem titled From Generation to Generation, the March of the Colours by the Jewish War Veterans and Barbara Crook’s singing of O Canada and Hatikvah.

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Page 14 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Preparing for Passover

Star of David Hebrew School Students (left to right) Samuel Bierbrier, Chaya Ambaya and Angela Radnoff prepare for Passover by participating in the Star of David Hebrew School’s model seder, March 24.

Harvey Brooks, 65, a bassist who once played with Bob Dylan, is among a growing number of older North American Jews making aliyah.

(Photo courtesy of Nefesh B'Nefesh)

Israel always seemed like it should be home (Continued from page 9)

Friendship Circle Participants in the Friendship Circle, a Jewish Youth Library program for children with special needs, prepared for Passover by baking their own matzo under the guidance of Rabbi Menachem Blum of the Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad.

They immigrated in 2007, settling in Petach Tikva, near Tel Aviv. They brought Miriam’s mother, now 90, with them.

Pollak, whose family survived the Holocaust in a Hungarian village on false papers, had first wanted to immigrate in 1949. But her mother, devastated by the loss of her entire family except a sister in Montreal, insisted the family go to Canada instead.

In later years, she and her husband, a chemistry professor, were repeatedly un-

successful in finding work that would allow them to make aliyah. Two of their daughters live in Israel, and they have 17 grandchildren here and another 12 in North America.

But Israel always seemed like it should be their home, especially after what they lived through, she said.

“We always felt Jews needed a place,” Pollak said. “We saw how during the Second World War nobody wanted us. We need Israel.”.

YRHS production of Brighton Beach Memoirs a hit Yitzhak Rabin High School’s production of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs played to full houses and enthusiastic reviews from the Cappies critics in the Ottawa Citizen.

(Above) Eugene (Itzy Kamil) muses about life after his father's heart attack.

(Left) Problems around the dinner table. (Clockwise from left) Laurie (Cassandra Starosta), Kate (Michaela Sadinsky), Jack (Zachary Kershman), Stanley (Raphael Sandler), Blanche (Stephanie Hagerman) and Nora (Mirren (Photos: Howard Sandler) Lithwick).

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 15

Inspired ‘fitness warrior’ leads Soloway JCC Runbots Running Club

By Pamela Rosenberg Soloway JCC After making the journey from “couch potato to fitness warrior,” Gloria Schwartz has made it her responsibility to motivate others to get up and get moving.

The driving force behind the Soloway JCC’s Runbots Running Club, Schwartz and three other women hit the streets running this past winter through snow, slush and sub-zero temperatures every Monday morning at 9:15.

“I wanted to start the club Mondays in the winter because I felt it was a great way to begin the week. It’s a different challenge running in the winter; it’s freezing and you wonder why you are doing it,” she said.

“You feel like you are part of a secret community when you pass another runner who is out there in the cold. I feel good that I have the fortitude to do it.”

The goal of Runbots Running Club is to allow runners of all levels to participate in a non-competitive group; promote running as part of a healthy lifestyle; encourage outdoor running all year long; inspire people to set goals and achieve their personal best; and share relevant information about running techniques, gear, hydration and nutrition. The Runbots are continuing to run right through the spring and welcome newcomers.

The group starts with a stretch and warmup outside the Soloway JCC followed by a five- to seven-km run. The runners try out different routes each week and, although they are serious about their running, chat as they go and never, ever leave anyone behind.

A self-proclaimed “fitness warrior,” Schwartz wasn’t always the picture of health and wellness she is today. It wasn’t until about three years ago, after leaving her job in

the high-tech industry, that her journey began.

It started with a few personal training sessions at the Soloway JCC Fitness Centre and turned into an entire shift in lifestyle that soon led to training for a half-marathon.

Schwartz buried herself in magazines and self-help books, and found inspiration in Soloway JCC trainer/friend Julie Nott and from the positive affirmations that she wrote on her mirror each morning.

“I would look in the mirror and tell myself, ‘I am a fitness warrior, I can do anything I set my mind too.’

“The hardest part of the body to retrain is your brain. I never believed I was athletic. I used to think of fitness as something you have to do, but it’s a lifestyle you have to enjoy or you will never do it or sustain it.”

After her first half-marathon, the inaugural Canada Army Run, she was awarded her first medal, which she proudly displays on a wall in her home. Since then, she has run two more half-marathons as well as many other shorter runs.

“I always try to challenge myself to stay motivated. My goal was to see if I could finish without collapsing – and I did. Once it’s in you and you’ve done it, no one can take it away from you.”

When she’s not running or working out, Schwartz is busy writing a book about her journey from couch potato to fitness warrior.

Since beginning her fitness frenzy, the mother of two young boys has lost 25 pounds and says that she is much more positive and confident than she has ever felt in her life.

“People come to me all the time and ask me what my secret is? I’m not an expert, but I know you have to change your life and eat

Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Jesse Gorman, a Grade 7 student at Toronto’s United Synagogue Day School, sound their shofars at the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, April 12, at the Canadian War Museum. (Photo: Denis Drever)

Soloway JCC Runbots Running Club members (left to right): Deb Walsh, Georgette Macdonald, Ilana Gregory and Gloria Schwartz.

healthy. There is no quick fix. You have to find your passion or it won’t last,” she says.

“Sitting around and complaining is not going to solve the problem.”

For more information about the Runbots Running Club, contact Soloway JCC Health and Wellness Director Carla Gencher at 613-7989818, ext. 278, or cgencher@jccottawa.com.

Page 16 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Eighth Annual Passover Lunch was a definite success.

The Ottawa Chapter of CFHU would like to thank the Sponsors and Patrons whose support makes this event possible.

Our Passover Lunch Event Sponsor SPONSORS Ambico Limited Andridge Capital Corporation Myrna & Norman Barwin Martin Z. Black, Barrister & Solicitor B’nai Brith Parliament Lodge Cohen & Lord Insurance Deloitte & Touche LLP Leanne & Jeff Greenberg & Family Larco Homes Logan Katz LLP Merivale Fish Market & Seafood Grill Jack & Carol-Sue Shapiro Soloway Wright LLP (Lawrence Soloway) TK Group Westboro Flooring & Décor

PATRONS Lew Auerbach Marjorie Feldman Carol Greenberg Robert Groves Susan Katz Les Kom Marianne Lods Gerald Posen Shelley Rothman Irma Sachs Art Saper Jeffrey Shuster David Spring Natalie Stern Judith Stoler Norman Zagerman

Special Thanks to: Marty Black, Myrna Barwin, Art Saper, Judah Silverman

Employment Opportunity

Congregation Beth Shalom YOUTH PROGRAMMER Beth Shalom Synagogue is looking to hire a part-time youth programmer.

Duties include: • Coordinate and run a Shabbat program from 10am – 11am for children: Grades 3 – 8 • Coordinate and run a Shabbat program from 11am – 12am for children: Junior Kindergarten - Grade 2 • Coordinate and run a program for children on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur • Communicate with parents and children about ongoing programming We are looking for someone who takes initiative and loves to work with children. Knowledge of Jewish traditions is also an important asset. The program will run every Saturday morning throughout the school year.

Please respond no later than Friday, May 28, 2010 to Congregation Beth Shalom at info@bethshalom.ca.

If you have any questions, you can also contact us at 613-789-3501, ext. 221.

Ottawa Reconstructionist Havurah changes name to Or Haneshamah (OrH)

By Bob Birnbaum and trator and regular visits by a Ruth Silbert student rabbi.

Or Haneshamah With a congregation of 90 Names are important in households, we have outJudaism. Naming is both a grown the havurah designastatement of our past and tion and, so, started the our future – where we process of exploring a name come from and what we change. hope we will be. A Jewish In the fall of 2008, we esname is a celebration of tablished a committee manJewish survival, Jewish dated to determine which elvalues and Jewish destiny. ements of Judaism our name The Ottawa Reconshould reflect: the relationstructionist Havurah is a ship to Torah, peace, spiritucommunity of families ality, prayer, the connection Rabbinical student and individuals who gathto Ottawa and bilingualism, Evette Lutman er to observe Shabbat and the Jewish people, ReconJewish holidays, to study and to socialize. We structionism, or even our ORH acronym. are egalitarian, democratic, participatory and Many factors were considered and the proself-led. Our primary meeting place is in cen- posed list of names reflected all of these ditral Ottawa. Our objectives are the continu- mensions. Ultimately, all the names proposed ance and enhancement of Jewish peoplehood were in Hebrew and retained the acronym. in the framework of the Reconstructionist As part of the process, we gathered input movement through words, practice, ritual, online and held a series of community meetblessing and commitment to Jewish learning. ings at which members had the opportunity to After 22 years of being known as the ‘Ot- reflect on, and debate, the proposed names tawa Reconstructionist Havurah (ORH),’ sev- and their meanings. eral community members asked if our name At a special meeting, November 22, the accurately reflected our current reality. A ORH community voted to accept our new havurah is part of an established movement name: Or Haneshamah (OrH): Ottawa’s Redesigned to bring together people who wish constructionist Community/La Communauté to study and practise Judaism without institu- Reconstructionniste d’Ottawa. tional and rabbinic support. We began as a A special naming ceremony will be held havurah with a small group who chose to cel- on June 19 when our student rabbi, Evette ebrate Shabbat and learn together. Over the Lutman, will be in Ottawa to celebrate Shabyears, we added life cycle events such as Bar bat with our community. For more informaand Bat Mitzvah, the services of an adminis- tion on Or Haneshamah, visit orh.ca.

AJA 50+ summer program registration on May 5

By Dena Speevak for AJA 50+ AJA 50+ (Active Jewish Adults 50+) Summer Program Registration Day will be held at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre on Wednesday, May 5 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm.

Registration will be followed by Ricarda Smith presenting another of her very popular slide shows, The French Riviera: Playground of the Rich and Famous at 1:00 pm. Reconnect with friends and acquaintances. Newcomers are always welcome. Light refreshments will be served.

AJA 50+ is an Ottawa success story with more than 400 members and 10 years experience in providing activities that meet the needs of adults from 50 to 90. AJA 50+ is about building connections with a focus on the interaction, be it cultural, recreational or educational. Get inspired by more than 30 courses and events offered from May through August, including outdoor walks, stimulating

speakers, museum tours, concerts and creative pursuits.

Highlights of the Summer 2010 programs include a workshop in writing Jewish family stories and memoirs with Lil Blume; a course on travel photography; a private tour of the Governor General’s residence; a garden tour in Port Elmsley; a Cube Gallery Tour; a visit to Kinneret, the Israeli ambassador’s residence in Ottawa, and a chance to chat with Ambassador Miriam Ziv; a special guided tour of the Canadian War Museum; a birdwatching expedition; a trail walk in Gatineau Park; and much more.

Our golf group will be starting up again as well as our other regular activities such as bridge drop-in, bridge lessons, computer instruction, and mah-jongg.

For more information about AJA50+, or to obtain the Summer 2010 Program Guide, contact Executive Director Annette Paquin at 613-7989818, ext. 309, or aja50plus@sympatico.ca.

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 17

Page 18 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 19

Page 20 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Canada should follow Israel’s lead on innovation, research and development The latest report card from the Conference Board of Canada ranks Canada 14th in innovation among 17 peer countries for 2009-10. Canada continues to be a D performer for innovation despite the fact we earned an A for education and skills, Bs in economy, society and health, and a C for the environment.

So, why are we not more innovative?

Canada’s poor performance is due to our lack of a cohesive national innovation strategy involving small- and medium-sized businesses. In funding innovation, our strategy has focused on large multinationals and academia. We spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars to fund innovation, mostly in the form of grants and contributions to universities, or in collaboration with larger firms.

The outcome is that academia holds a large number of patents and intellectual property rights that are too expensive for Canadian startups or medium-sized businesses to license and which just sit on shelves gathering dust. Not only are they not producing tangible products or financial returns, but entrepreneurs are impeded from using them to develop products for the Canadians who originally funded the research and development (R&D).

The backbone of any economy is small business. Proportionally, a greater number of jobs are created by small- and medium-sized businesses that hire and pay taxes (and vote) locally.

Small business creates jobs through innovation. In July

2008, Industry Canada reported, “Statistics on Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credits reveal two telling facts about innovation by small businesses – in absolute amounts, they spend far less than large firms; however, as a percentage of revenue (R&D intensity), spending on innovation by small businesses far outstrips that of larger firms.”

Small business, then, works hard at being innovative even though it gets less government encouragement than larger firms.

The Kauffman Foundation is devoted to entrepreneurship and the promotion of innovation in America. According to its 2010 State of Entrepreneurship address, the foundation concludes that, based on statistics, “New and young companies and the entrepreneurs that create them are the engines of job creation and eventual economic recovery.”

According to Robert E. Litan, Kauffman’s vice-president for research and policy, “Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were five years old or less. That is about 40 million jobs.

That means the established firms created no new net jobs during that period.”

Large firms know this. According to a 2009 Kauffmann study, one of the ways multinationals create jobs is by acquiring younger, smaller firms to bring innovation into their companies. Based on such reasoning, some observers attribute the demise of Nortel, in part, to a dearth of small innovative feeder firms.

I had the good fortune to be invited, with a handful of other business leaders, to meet Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz during his February visit to promote trade with Israel.

Israel is unique in the innovation world. In 2007, it invested 4.7 to 4.8 per cent of its GDP on R&D, the highest

World Affairs Oliver Javanpour

ratio in the world. Canada was at 1.88 to 1.94 per cent that year.

Israel also leads in the number of startup firms, the number of small firms, and the number of annual patents filed.

After the U.S. and Canada, Israel is the third major country whose firms are listed on the NASDAQ. The World Economic Forum has designated Israel one of the leading countries in the world for technological innovation and ranked Israel first in R&D investments, second for venture capital availability, fourth for higher education achievements, and sixth for overall innovation. Canada ranked 11th.

Israel ranked fourth in co-operation between academia and industry, while Canada ranked eighth. The notable nuance in this ranking is the size of industries involved – in Israel the co-operation is normally with small startup firms while in Canada it is with large multinationals.

Job creation should be the number one priority for federal and provincial governments.

To do this the way Israel has done it, we need to develop a national strategy around innovation. We can learn much from how this small nation treats its most valuable commodity: the bright people who populate its small businesses.

Our two nations have a lot in common, including a large, educated population, high quality academic institutions, and highly motivated entrepreneurs. Clearly, job creation depends on the entrepreneurial spirit found in small firms in Canada.

With this in mind, we can design a unique made-in-Canada solution to get our entrepreneurs innovating and employing our way out of recession. We bailed out Canadian banks to the tune of about $75 billion in government purchases of bank securities through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and spent $3.3 billion in federal and provincial loans for the auto industry. If we’d earmarked a fraction of the bail-out money to help the small, innovative firms in our country, we could have shifted our focus from bailing out to building up.

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Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 21

Goy-meets-girl romance leads to an embrace of Judaism Jew and Improved: How Choosing to Be Chosen Made Me a Better Man

By Benjamin Errett HarperCollins 266 pages “When Sarah and I got engaged, I decided joining her tribe was the right thing to do …” writes Benjamin Errett in the opening chapter of Jew and Improved: How Choosing to Be Chosen Made Me a Better Man. “I couldn’t quite articulate why I wanted to do this … I knew I was searching for something, though I had no clear idea what that something was.”

Errett, now an editor at the National Post, was from Montreal and moved to Connecticut as a child. His family, he writes, were “Christmas-and-Easter Catholics.” He returned to Montreal as a McGill student and was a biology student accepted to medical school when he got interested in journalism and became editor of the McGill Daily.

It was at the Daily office in 2001 that Errett met Sarah Lazarovic, another student whose family had also left Montreal for the U.S. when she was a young child. Lazarovic grew up in Boca Raton, Florida and was also back in Montreal as a special student at McGill while working on a studio arts degree at Concordia.

Jew and Improved is Errett’s often-humorous and occasionally poignant story of his “goy-meets-girl” romance with Lazarovic, his decision to become Jewish, the course of study

he – actually, they – followed in Toronto, his Reform conversion and their Montreal wedding. Along the way are accounts of trips the couple takes to Montreal, Ottawa and Israel. Writing the book, it seems, was Errett’s way of figuring out what his search “for something” was all about.

Along with Errett’s writing, the book also features illustrations by Lazarovic, a filmmaker, writer and illustrator whose Another Week strip now graces the Opinion page of the Sunday Ottawa Citizen every week. Her drawings, including adding a hat, beard and peyos to a photo of Errett on the book cover, add to the lightheartedness of the story.

Among the funniest sections of the book are descriptions of the conversion class taught by a nightmarish teacher, his efforts to learn how to read Hebrew, Errett’s symbolic brit milah – he’d been circumcised as a baby – and his examination by the panel of rabbis who would decide whether or not to approve his conversion.

As Did you know? columnist Benita Baker noted in the April 5 issue of the Bulletin, there is a local connection to Jew and Improved. Sandy Kronick is Sarah Lazarovic’s aunt and one of the funniest chapters in the book talks about the annual Lazarovic family trips to Ottawa to celebrate Passover with Aunt Sandy and her family.

Sandy also turns up near the book’s end, in the story of the Errett-Lazarovic wedding, as the one person able to pull order out of chaos.

But, the book is not all lighthearted. There is a chapter in

Book Review Michael Regenstreif which Errett describes how his understanding of the Holocaust begins to deepen after getting to know Lazarovic’s grandmother, an Auschwitz survivor, and of how she inspired him to learn more.

For the most part, Jew and Improved is a humorous, breezy account that’s easy, and, often, fun to read. There are also moments that are thoughtful and moving. Errett comes across as a nice guy who wants to do the right things for what he perceives as the right reasons. And the right reasons in his case all seem to be centred on the woman he fell in love with, her family life, and his wanting to be a full participant in the customs and religious and cultural rituals tied to the Lazarovic family’s traditions.

While I never got the sense that Jewish theology was really a motivating factor in Errett’s beginning his journey to conversion, he does show his understanding of the gravity and eternal nature of his commitment to Judaism and he does find a spiritual home in modern Reform practice.

Errett’s “choosing to be chosen,” his course of Jewish studies, his participation in Jewish life, not only in the family’s Jewish life, but in the Jewish community, too, brought him to a spiritual and ethical place that gave him an understanding of how to be a “better man.” As my old friend Michael Wex would say, Errett learned how to be a mensch

Helping youth understand the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict This month, thousands of parents from around the world have sent their teenaged kids on a life-changing trip to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. The March of the Living takes Jewish youth on the three-kilometre route of the death march between Auschwitz and Birkenau to witness the locus of the destruction of European Jewry. In Poland, participants commemorate an unforgettable Yom HaShoah. Many of them continue on to Israel where they have the opportunity to celebrate a Yom Ha’Atzmaut like no other.

Those who take part in the trip come away with the ability to visualize Jewish collective history in a most powerful way.

But, in pairing the Holocaust with contemporary Israel, the program potentially sets up a problematic linkage between Israeli policies and Jewish existential security. Parents would do well to discuss with their kids the lessons they are taking away about the Middle East.

It is widely agreed that modern Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel came about through a variety of push and pull factors. Centuries of anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust, pushed Jews to clamour for self-determination on the world stage. But, Zionism was as much about the drive to express collective national yearnings as it was about the escape from persecution. Israel’s core identity as a Jewish state makes more sense when it is viewed as an extension of national liberation movements worldwide rather than only – or even primarily – as a safety net.

There is a potential problem with introducing youth to contemporary Israel on the heels of sending them to witness the remnants of humanity’s darkest moments. If the message is that the existence of Israel safeguards the never again imperative of Holocaust remembrance, then today’s youth may conclude that Israel is justified in taking any action in the name of

Values, Ethics, Community Mira Sucharov security to protect Jews worldwide. To what ends would you have gone, they may be silently asking themselves, to have dismantled the Nazi machine, if you could have?

In today’s context, Israel faces a delicate security situation at the same time that it has some tough choices to make. Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program and Ahmadinejad’s prickly rhetoric make Israelis feel threatened. But the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the Third Reich. Statesmen have often drawn on misleading historical analogies to navigate current policy with disastrous results.

Closer to home, Israel’s continued hold over the West Bank is leading Israel closer to having to choose between being a Jewish state or a democratic one, a problem that observers have long pointed to as the occupation has dragged on for decades. How one views the security value of the West Bank for Jewish security will no doubt depend on which analogies are used.

Political psychologists have pointed to perceptual distortions such as the evoked set: what is foremost in one’s mind affects how one processes incoming information. As I demonstrate to my students through the timed use of visual imagery, a visit to the beach will seem much different the day after

watching Jaws than it will after watching The Little Mermaid.

It is a conceptual stretch to say Israel’s recent announcement of 1,600 housing units in east Jerusalem, or its continuing blockade over Gaza, or its snaking of the security barrier throughout the West Bank to protect existing settlements while Palestinians experience daily humiliation and collective punishment are necessary to maintaining the health and welfare of Israelis, and, by extension, all Jews. But these are the kinds of implicit messages our youth might well take away from the trip, even if it is not the intention of the organizers.

It is an understatement to say that Israeli politics are dynamic, with left-wing and right-wing debates wildly animating the body politic. Many Diaspora youth may eventually conclude that a particular set of Israeli policies are necessary or desirable. This is the prerogative of any engaged global citizen. Neither is this to say that Israel is entirely to blame for the current stalemate.

But we shouldn’t be stacking the deck for our kids by presenting an uncritical link between the Holocaust and contemporary Israeli approaches to peace and conflict. The volatile mix of emotion, morality and rationality so pronounced during adolescence can create especially binary thinking of rightversus-wrong and us-versus-them.

While trips like March of the Living provide an enormously powerful learning experience about the dangers of racism and prejudice, we would do well to ensure that our youth take away the most complex lessons they can about the sadly enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University and the author of The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.

Page 22 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

FOUNDATION DONATIONS

Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation Grants to Organizations ✡ December 31, 2009 ORGANIZATION

2009 Dollars

Ottawa Jewish Community Agencies Agudath Israel Synagogue 714 Beth Shalom Congregation 6,061 Beth Shalom West Congregation 153 Camp B'nai Brith 12,519 Camp Gesher 138 Canada Israel Cultural Foundation 344 Canadian Friends of Torah Academy 3,382 Cheder Rambam School 22,519 Gilbert Greenberg Education Fund 48,200 George Joseph Cooper Scholarship Award 12,457 Hillel Academy 66,109 Hillel Lodge 91,957 Hillel Lodge Ladies Auxiliary 226 Hillel Ottawa 4,339 Jewish Community Campus of Ottawa Inc. 23,948 Jewish Community Cemetery-Holocaust Memorial 315 Jewish Community of Ottawa Development Foundation* 107,164 Jewish Education through Torah 36,323 Jewish Family Services 71,029 Jewish Federation of Ottawa 32,884 Jewish Federation of Ottawa Annual Campaign 233,357 Jewish Memorial Gardens 38,590 Jewish National Fund 10,619 Jewish Youth Library 5,403 Kosher Food Bank c/o Agudath Israel Synagogue 6,562 Machon Sarah High School 96 Machzikei Hadas Congregation 4,119 Na'Amat Ottawa 355 Ottawa Chevra Kadisha 539 Ottawa Hadassah-WIZO 1,636 Ottawa Hebrew Free Loan 308 Ottawa Jewish Archives 3,424 Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation (PACE Subsidies) 14,942 Ottawa Jewish Historical Society 6,225 Ottawa Modern Jewish School 2,512 Ottawa Post Jewish War Veterans of Canada 876 Ottawa Torah Center Chabad 17,592 Ottawa Torah Institute 13,104 Ottawa Vaad Hakashrut 317 Shoah (Holocaust) Committee of Ottawa 4,685 Soloway Jewish Community Centre 91,876 Soloway Jewish Community Centre (AJA 50+) 7,932 Star of David Hebrew School 1,628 Talmud Torah Afternoon School 7,893 Tamir Foundation 58,136 Temple Israel Congregation 1,764 Temple Israel Ottawa Foundation 1,901 Temple Israel Religious School 3,154 Torah Academy of Ottawa 17,789 Vered Israel Cultural Centre 11,032 Yitzhak Rabin High School 22,126

Total

1,131,543

Jewish Agencies North America Conservatory for Judaic Performing Arts Emunah Women of Canada – (Rachel Kizell Chapter) Imre Noam Congregation London Community Hebrew Day School Machon Tzvi Hersh Mazon Canada Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation - Montreal Nishma Societal Endeavour in Understanding Torah Oir Hachaim D’Tash Bois Briand ORT Canada Reena Foundation Ruchama Fraidel Relief Organization Society for the Education of Russian Jews – SERJ Toronto Jewish Free Loan Yeshivat Or Chaim Zareinu

Total

1,220 531 700 100 744 39 54 34 412 618 48 157 195 80 395 188

5,515

Jewish Agencies in Israel, Ottawa and North America Netzach Fund – Grants and Allocation (anonymous) Tzedek Fund – Grants and Allocations (anonymous)

Total

310,561 10,000

320,561

Israeli Institutions Beit Halochem Canada/Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel (Canada) 73 Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 994 Canadian Foundation for Masorti Judaism re: Kehilat Netzach Yisrael in Ashkelon for needy children 343 Canadian Friends of Alyn 65 Canadian Friends of Bar Ilan University 2,610 Canadian Friends of Hebrew University 3,458 Canadian Friends of Jerusalem Blind Institute 392 Canadian Friends of Laniado Hospital 745 Canadian Friends of Ramat Shapira Israel 328 Canadian Friends of Shaare Tzedek Hospital Foundation 170 Canadian Friends of Weizmann Institute of Science 2,392 Canadian Magen David Adom in Israel 1,364 Canadian Technion Society 2,332 Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies 130 Israel Cancer Research Fund 283 Mizrachi Organization of Canada for Yeshiva Haye Olam 205 United Israel Appeal Federations Canada 11,439

Canadian Tribute to Human Rights Carleton University Children at Risk Ottawa Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Children’s Wish Foundation Community Foundation of Ottawa – Carleton Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada Foundation for Fighting Blindness Girls & Boys Club of Ottawa-Carleton Heart and Stroke Foundation Hillcrest High School JACS Toronto Kemptville District Hospital Kidney Foundation of Canada Kiwanis Club of Ottawa Medical Foundation Lisgar Alumni Association Nepean High School North York General Hospital Sheila Cohen Fund for Women’s Health Ottawa Deaf Centre Ottawa Hospital Foundation Ottawa Humane Society Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre Foundation Parkinson’s Society Ottawa - Carleton Parkway House Pinchas Zukerman Music Education Fund Queen’s University Queensway Carleton Hospital Foundation REACH Royal Ottawa Hospital Foundation The Salvation Army United Way of Ottawa-Carleton University of Ottawa University of Ottawa Heart Institute Foundation Water-Can

Total

65,773

Total to Jewish Causes To Non-Sectarian Organizations

294

1,482,897 68,153

1,551,009

27,323 *Grants from the Jewish Community of Ottawa Development Foundation were allocated as follows:

General Non-Sectarian Organizations Alzheimer Society Ottawa-Carleton Andrew Fleck Integration Service Arthritis Society Canadian Association for HIV Research Canadian Cancer Society Canadian Diabetes Association Canadian National Institute for the Blind Canadian Orthopedic Foundation Canadian Red Cross Society - Ottawa-Carleton Branch

289 238 32,255 35 344 12 357 3,839 412 2,162 86 98 412 417 1,420 11,306 248

Allocated but not distributed

Total Grants to Organizations Total

84 3,117 95 2,564 148 328 494 345 187 316 250 157 412 115 146 413 55

156 190 176 12 897 90 413 413 270

Jewish Family Services Vered Israel Cultural Centre Hillel Lodge Hillel Academy Soloway JCC Jewish Federation of Ottawa

Total

Thank you to our donors.

With your support, we were able to distribute more than $1.5 million to worthy charitable organizations.

6,042 7,508 48,269 22,081 22,081 1,183

107,164

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 23

FOUNDATION DONATIONS Our future is in your hands

Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation

ABELSON FAMILY ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Al Cohen by Tracey Kronick and Al Abelson.

To make a donation and/or send a tribute card, call Carolene Preap (613-798-4696 ext. 232) e-mail: cpreap@jewishottawa.com • website: www.OJCF.ca

Join us in building our community by supporting these local agencies MENDEL AND VALERIE GOOD HOLOCAUST CONTINUING EDUCATION FUND In appreciation to: Ely Braun by Harry Prizant, Sarah Silverstein and 2010 MOL Group.

HILLEL ACADEMY ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Jon Carr by Stacey, Mark, Jonah and Max Cantor.

Happy Passover to: Rivka and Victor Grebler by Edie Landau.

In appreciation to: David Cantor by Gita and Jerry Pearl.

HILLEL LODGE LEGACY FUND In memory of: Al Cohen by John, Andrea, Morgan and Jordan Zagerman.

SOLOWAY JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTRE ENDOWMENT FUND Mazal Tov to: Ian Elfenbaum and Susan Adler on their upcoming marriage by David and Jackie Lyman.

SARA AND ZEEV VERED ISRAEL CULTURAL PROGRAM FUND Mazal Tov to: Sara Vered on being honoured by JNF by Sol and Zelaine Shinder; and by Marilyn and William Newman.

AJA 50+ ENDOWMENT FUND AKIVA EVENING HIGH SCHOOL ENDOWMENT FUND ADINA BEN PORAT MACHON SARAH TORAH EDUCATION FUND SHIRLEY AND SHIER BERMAN FUND FOR OTTAWA JEWISH ARCHIVES

The Board of Directors of the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation acknowledges with thanks contributions to the following funds as of April 7, 2010.

DORIS BRONSTEIN TALMUD TORAH AFTERNOON SCHOOL FUND BARRY FISHMAN OTTAWA JEWISH BULLETIN SCHOLARSHIP FUND MARTIN GLATT PARLIAMENT LODGE B’NAI BRITH PAST PRESIDENTS’ FUND GREENBERG FAMILIES LIBRARY ENDOWMENT FUND HILLEL ACADEMY CHILDREN OF THE BOOK AWARD FUND JEWISH COMMUNITY CEMETERY HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL FUND JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES AGENCY FUND JEWISH MEN’S SOFTBALL LEAGUE FUND JEWISH STUDENTS ASSOCIATION HILLEL FUND JEWISH YOUTH LIBRARY OF OTTAWA ENDOWMENT FUND DAVID “THE BEAR” KARDASH CAMP B’NAI BRITH MEMORIAL FUND OTTAWA JEWISH CEMETERIES ZICHARON FUND OTTAWA JEWISH COMMUNITY ENDOWMENT FUND OTTAWA JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY FUND OTTAWA LODGE B’NAI BRITH #885 PAST PRESIDENTS FUND OTTAWA LODGE B’NAI BRITH #885 PRESIDENTS SCHOLARSHIP FUND OTTAWA MODERN JEWISH SCHOOL FUND OTTAWA POST JEWISH WAR VETERANS FUND OTTAWA TORAH INSTITUTE TORAH EDUCATION FUND RAMBAM MAIMONIDES JEWISH CONTINUITY FUND SOLOWAY JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTRE EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION FUND SOLOWAY JEWISH COMMUNITY SUMMER CAMP SCHOLARSHIP FUND SOLOWAY JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTRE YOUTH SERVICES FUND TORAH ACADEMY OF OTTAWA TORAH EDUCATION FUND YITZHAK RABIN HIGH SCHOOL FUND IN MEMORY OF EVA WINTHROP

APPOTIVE FAMILY ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Beloved mother of Reeva Appotive by Edith, Sharon and Jeff Appotive.

ABRAHAM AND RACHEL BAROOK MEMORIAL FUND In memory of: Al Cohen by Cynthia and Max Weinstein.

Polly Cohen by Cynthia and Max Weinstein.

Betty Atin by Cynthia and Max Weinstein.

ISAAC AND HELEN BEILES ENDOWMENT FUND In observance of the Yahrzeit of: Helen Beiles, a beloved aunt by Rachel and Jerry Schneiderman.

IRVING AND ESTHER BELLMAN MEMORIAL FUND In memory of: Estelle McCarthy by Mitchell Bellman and Nicola Hamer.

ALEX AND MOLLIE BETCHERMAN MEMORIAL FUND Happy Passover to: Linda Greenberg by Joy Rosenstein and Bonnie Greenberg.

Acher family by Joy Rosenstein.

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Weinberg by Joy Rosenstein.

Mrs. M. Weinberg by Joy Rosenstein.

Mr. and Mrs. T. Beallor by Joy Rosenstein.

Mr. and Mrs. Irving Betcherman by Joy Rosenstein, Bonnie Greenberg and Ronald Singer.

Dr. and Mrs. Leon Root by Joy Rosenstein and Bonnie Greenberg.

SAM AND ANN BROZOVSKY ENDOWMENT FUND Anniversary wishes to: Kenneth and Linda Mirsky on their 50th wedding anniversary by Ann Brozovsky.

ISRAEL AND POLLY COHEN ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Polly Cohen by Erin and Andy Oliver; by Rachel and Mark O’Neil; and by David and Joy Kardish.

CYNTHIA AND ABE ENGEL ENDOWMENT FUND Anniversary wishes to: Kenneth and Linda Mirsky on their 50th wedding anniversary by Cynthia Engel.

Congratulations to: Josh Engel on becoming a partner with GGFL by Beth Roodman.

MARJORIE AND MICHAEL FELDMAN FAMILY FUND Mazal Tov to: Marjorie and Michael Feldman on the birth of their grandson by Sol and Zelaine Shinder.

HARRY FINE MEMORIAL FUND In memory of: Jerry Taylor by Sara Shabsove.

Al Cohen by Sara Shabsove.

HOWARD HERZL GOLDBERG SCHOLARSHIP FUND Happy Passover to: Eileen Goldberg by Shawn, Helene, Chaim and Aaron Goldberg.

Mazal Tov to: Ellen Rivers on the birth of her granddaughter by Shawn, Helene, Chaim and Aaron Goldberg.

IBOLYA AND HOWARD GOLDBERG FAMILY FUND Mazal Tov to: Sheila Guttmann on becoming a great-grandmother

by Shawn, Helene, Chaim and Aaron Goldberg.

Happy Passover to: Ina and Herb Scheer by Shawn, Helene, Chaim and Aaron Goldberg.

HERB AND DENA GOSEWICH ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Sam Charron by Herb and Dena Gosewich.

Al Cohen by Herb and Dena Gosewich.

Anniversary wishes to: Kenneth and Linda Mirsky on their 50th wedding anniversary by Herb and Dena Gosewich.

Birthday wishes to: Agnes Hurter and Olive Davey by Herb and Dena Gosewich.

MICHAEL GREENBERG MEMORIAL FUND Birthday wishes to: Leonard Shore by Steve, Joss, Lee, Jessica and Emma Greenberg.

MOE AND ESTHER KARDISH ENDOWMENT FUND Anniversary wishes to: Kenneth and Linda Mirsky on their 50th wedding anniversary by Moe Kardish.

ARTHUR AND SARAH KIMMEL MEMORIAL FUND Mazal Tov to: Sunny and John Tavel on the birth of their granddaughter by Arnie and Roslyn Kimmel.

Speedy recovery to: Gerry Green by Dan and Marilyn Kimmel.

KRANTZBERG KRANE FAMILY FUND Birthday wishes to: Clair Krantzberg by Gerry and Morrie Krantzberg.

SUSAN AND DAVID KRIGER ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Joan Kizell by Susan and David Kriger.

ANNICE AND SYDNEY KRONICK FAMILY FUND Anniversary wishes to: Debi and Neil Zaret by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Mazal Tov to: Alti and Berel Rodal on the engagement of Ariel to Laurie Spieler by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Jane Mirsky and Leonard Shore on the engagement of Lauren to Greg by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Happy Passover to: Sally and Elliott Levitan by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Joe and Evelyn Lieff by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Henry and Maureen Molot by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Sol and Zelaine Shinder by Sydney Kronick and Barbara Sugarman.

Continued on page 24

Page 24 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

FOUNDATION DONATIONS LEON AND BYRTHA LECKIE MEMORIAL FUND Birthday wishes to: Norm Leckie by Robin Leckie.

HARRY AND ZENA LEIKIN ENDOWMENT FUND Birthday wishes to: Ethel Kesler by Libby and Stan Katz.

BERNIE AND IDA LESH ENDOWMENT FUND In appreciation to: Allen and Sandra Quallenberg by Ian, Lisa and Michelle Auerbach.

SALLY AND ELLIOTT LEVITAN ENDOWMENT FUND Birthday wishes to: Clair Krantzberg by Sally and Elliott Levitan.

NATHAN AND LAURIE LEVITIN MEMORIAL FUND In memory of: Pearl Moskovic by Harry and Sally Weltman.

GERI MIGICOVSKY CICF FOUNDATION FOR THE PINCHAS ZUKERMAN MUSIC EDUCATION FUND In honour of: The late Zeev Vered on being inducted to the OCA Wall of Fame by Geri Migicovsky.

Sara Vered on being honoured by JNF by Geri Migicovsky.

ISAAC OHANA MEMORIAL FUND In memory of: Solange Ohana by Annette, Lorne, Sarah, Aaron and Livia Shelson; by Ken, Rosie, Jonathan, Eric and Lee Shelson; and by Karen Goldstein.

JACK AND MIRIAM PLEET ENDOWMENT FUND Mazal Tov to: Sally and Elliott Levitan on their daughter’s engagement by Jack and Miriam Pleet.

EVELYN AND NORMAN POTECHIN ENDOWMENT FUND Anniversary wishes to: Evelyn and Norman Potechin by Judith Wolfe.

GERALD AND MARY-BELLE PULVERMACHER FAMILY ENDOWMENT FUND Mazal Tov to: Norman and Elsa Swedko on Stacy’s engagement

by Gerry and Mary-Belle Pulvermacher.

MOE AND SARAH RESNICK ENDOWMENT FUND Birthday wishes to: Sol Goldmaker by Lou and Marjorie Goldmaker.

ALTI AND BEREL RODAL FAMILY FUND Mazal Tov to: Avremi and Chani Kagan on the birth of Sholom David Yonah by Alti and Berel Rodal.

In memory of: Chimen Abramsky by Alti and Berel Rodal.

FRANCES AND MORTON ROSS FAMLY FUND Mazal Tov to: Fran and Mort Ross on the birth of their grandson Alexander by Sol and Zelaine Shinder; by Corinne and Sheldon Taylor; and by Helen and Rick Zipes.

In memory of: Jerry Taylor by Fran and Mort Ross.

SAUL AND EDNA GOLDFARB B’NAI MITZVAH FUND

What do your “kids” really care about?

Do they care about hanging out with their friends? Playing sports?

Playing their musical instruments?

How about helping the homeless in their community? Fighting anti-Semitism? Supporting people with disabilities?

Through the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation, our community’s youth can achieve both! They can be the active individuals that they are all while making a difference through tzedakah, one gift at a time.

Teens can make their Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s an extra special event by opening a B’nai Mitzvah Fund in their name. This gives them the vehicle to support causes dear to their hearts.

Forever!

You can make a difference in your child’s life by encouraging your son or daughter to establish a B’nai Mitzvah Fund. Their participation in the B’nai Mitzvah Club, which is for teens age 12 up to pre-post secondary, will affect the rest of their lives in a positive and philanthropic manner.

Now is the time to encourage your child to become a charitable, responsible member of the Jewish Community.

To obtain information on how to open a B’nai Mitzvah Fund for as little as $250, call the Foundation office today at 613-798-4696 extension 252 or email info@ojcf.ca. Additional information can be found on our website at www.OJCF.ca.

RICHARD ROTH AND RIVA LEVITAN FAMILY FUND Mazal Tov to: Laila and Richard Wex on Josh’s Bar Mitzvah by Richard, Riva, Jared and Aaron Roth.

In memory of: Jon Carr by Richard, Riva, Jared and Aaron Roth.

SAMUEL AND RUTH ROTHMAN MEMORIAL FUND Mazal Tov to: Steve and Sue Rothman on the birth of their grandson Nate Issie by Corinne and Sheldon Taylor.

In memory of: Polly Cohen by Corinne and Sheldon Taylor.

Beloved mother of Alla Mazor by Corinne and Sheldon Taylor.

RICKIE AND MARTIN SASLOVE FAMILY FUND Mazal Tov to: Claire and Irving Bercovitch on their granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah by Rickie and Martin Saslove.

Sara Vered on being honoured by JNF by Rickie and Martin Saslove.

ABRAHAM AND MARY SHAFFER MEMORIAL FUND Happy Passover to: Brenda and Marvin Segal and family by the Krane and Shaffer family.

Charles and Susan Schwartzman and family by the Krane and Shaffer family.

ABE AND NELLIE SHAPIRO MEMORIAL FUND Happy Passover to: David and Margo Kardish by Carol-Sue and Jack Shapiro.

Sol and Zelaine Shinder by Carol-Sue and Jack Shapiro.

Ian and Randi Sherman by Carol-Sue and Jack Shapiro.

DR. ROBERT NORMAN SHOIHET MEMORIAL FUND Birthday wishes to: David Shoihet by Lillian Shoihet.

Shirley Shoihet by Lillian Shoihet.

LORNE AND LAURIE SHUSTERMAN FAMILY FUND Birthday wishes to: Pat Broady by Lorne and Laurie Shusterman.

R’fuah Sh’lemah to: Millie Radish by Lorne and Laurie Shusterman.

Anniversary wishes to: Gillie and Susan Vered on their 25th wedding anniversary by Lorne and Laurie Shusterman.

Mazal Tov to: Laurie and Lorne Shusterman on Zachary’s outstanding service in the IDF by Marilyn and Tom Hicks.

JACK AND SARAH SILVERSTEIN FAMILY ENDOWMENT FUND In appreciation to: Harvey Slipacoff by the Silverstein family.

STELLA AND LOUIS SLACK MEMORIAL FUND Anniversary wishes to: Kenneth and Linda Mirsky by Myra and Lester Aronson.

JACK AND LINDA SMITH ENDOWMENT FUND Birthday wishes to: Clair Krantzberg by Linda Smith.

In memory of: Jack Smith by Fenja and Irwin Brodo.

VICTOR AND SHIRLEY STEINBERG ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Pearl Moskovic by Shirley Steinberg.

Mazal Tov to: Estelle and Ian Melzer on the birth of their grandson by Shirley Steinberg.

DORIS AND RICHARD STERN FAMILY FUND In memory of: Edythe Bucovetsky by Doris and Richard Stern.

CASEY SWEDLOVE MEMORIAL FUND Happy Passover to: Marty and Ellie Black by Carol-Sue and Jack Shapiro and Bess Swedlove.

SUSAN WEISMAN AND JEFF TAYLOR ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Estelle McCarthy by Susie Weisman, Jeff, Josh, Bram and Dani Taylor.

Sandra Hershenkopf by Susie Weisman, Jeff, Josh, Bram and Dani Taylor.

BARBARA AND GERALD THAW ENDOWMENT FUND Happy Passover to: Mark, Lise, Alayna and Bryan Thaw by Barbara and Gerald Thaw.

Susan and Joel Greenberg by Barbara and Gerald Thaw.

Continued on page 25

Support your Ottawa Jewish community by sending a tribute card to your friends and loved ones.

Minimum donation of $18 for single cards or $15 per card for 18 cards or more.

Make your donation online at www.OJCF.ca or call the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation at 613.798.4696 ext. 232.

To request 18+ cards at $15 each, please call our office. This option is not available online.

Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 25

FOUNDATION DONATIONS In memory of: Lisa Dalfen by Barbara and Gerald Thaw.

LISE, MARK, ALAYNA AND BRYAN THAW FAMILY FUND Happy Passover to: Barbara and Gerald Thaw by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Susan and Joel Greenberg by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Gail and Stan Hitzig by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Joany and Andy Katz and family by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Ron Cherney and family by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Michael Gennis and Bob Birnbaum and families

by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Jon and Ellen Reider and family by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Margo Shabinsky and family by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Elsa and Norman Swedko by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

Dorothy Nadolny by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

In memory of: Lisa Dalfen by Lise, Mark, Alayna and Bryan Thaw.

STEPHEN AND GAIL VICTOR ENDOWMENT FUND Birthday wishes to: Mollie Fine by Sandy Marchello.

MILDRED AND PERCY WEINSTEIN ENDOWMENT FUND In memory of: Polly Cohen by Millie Weinstein.

IRVING AND DIANE WEXLER FAMILY FUND In memory of: Evelyn Stober by Carole Segal and Diane Wexler.

ZIPES KARANOFSKY FAMILY ENDOWMENT FUND Birthday wishes to: Brian Tannenbaum by Rick and Helen Zipes.

THE SAUL AND EDNA GOLDFARB B’NAI MITZVAH PROGRAM MARA BOSLOY B’NAI MITZVAH FUND Speedy recovery to: The Benhamou family by the Bosloy family.

REBECCA BOSLOY MITZVAH FUND In memory of: Barabara Bork by the Bosloy family.

Sandra Hershenkopf by the Bosloy family.

Lisa Silverman by the Bosloy family.

CHARLOTTE HAMBURG MITZVAH FUND In memory of: Sandra Hershenkopf by Cybele and Lyon Hamburg.

RYAN GOLDBERG B’NAI MITZVAH FUND Anniversary wishes to: Evelyn and Norm Potechin by Mary and Len Potechin.

Birthday wishes to: Evelyn Potechin by Mary and Len Potechin.

MARSHALL ROTHMAN B’NAI MITZVAH FUND Birthday wishes to: Dorothy Huyer by Corinne and Sheldon Taylor.

Contributions may be made online

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Attractive cards are sent to convey the appropriate sentiments. All donations are acknowledged with an official receipt for income tax purposes. We accept Visa, MasterCard and Amex.

Waxing nonsense on the 401 I was driving to Toronto for Passover along the seemingly endless Highway 401. This is a trip I have made so many times that if you tell me how long I have been driving, I can tell you where I am.

Or, if you tell me the name of the town we are at, I can tell you how long I still have to go.

There are times during such drives when one enters an altered state of consciousness, especially when I hit Brockville and still have three hours to go.

My wife will drift off and there will be utter silence in my travelling cocoon. It’s a little like being in a slow-working transporter from Star Trek, which I enter at my house and – barring bathroom breaks – exit at my son’s house.

Often, some apparently meaningless phrase will float into my consciousness and, with nothing better to do than watch long lines of trucks, I feel constrained to contemplate it.

Once, it suddenly occurred to me that conversations in which we thank people are odd.

Why do we say “Fine, thanks,� when someone asks how we are? Why is “fine� incomplete?

Should I be grateful that someone asks me how I am? After all, it is not really an opportunity to speak my mind or to tell anyone how I really am. I’ve tried it and the person who asked suddenly gets an anxious look on his or her face and tells me that he or she has an urgent appointment and must get away immediately.

Another time, I suddenly recalled the beginning of “Horatius at the Bridge,� a poem by Thomas Babbington Macaulay, I memorized in Grade 6. For me, it’s a little like those catchy commercial jingles that torture us by being impossible to forget.

Then, there are these seemingly nonsensical lines from Lewis Carroll: ‘ “The time has come,� the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing-wax ...�

Humour me, please Rubin Friedman It’s then that I realize that sealing-wax, when Carroll wrote the poem, was as real as shoes and ships.

Nowadays, if I asked someone what sealing-wax is, they might tell me it’s a kind of substance one rubs on the ceiling before polishing it. Hardly anyone actually uses sealing-wax anymore.

These thoughts lead immediately to others.

Wax, for instance, comes from two old Germanic words. There is the noun, wax, the yellow resinous substance we use to polish things, and there is the lesser known verb, wax, as in “wax and wane.�

These two words are also in German and Yiddish and the verb, vachs, is actually the regular verb meaning “to grow.� Fashion, or fate, has determined that, in English, this verb is not one we use every day, even though it has a meaning similar to the everyday use in Yiddish and German.

As time passes on the way to Toronto, it seems to be doing other things. It changes sealing-wax to ceiling wax and makes someone who uses wax as a verb sound old-fashioned.

Old verses sound silly. Who knows? It might even make it obsolete for us to say “Thanks,� when someone asks how we are.

And, with that thought, I reached my destination.

The time had come to speak of sealing-wax, but now it’s gone.

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Page 26 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

Made with Love

Can I bring anything?

I recently invited some friends for Shabbat dinner. When they asked if they could bring anything, my immediate response was, “Not a thing, just come and enjoy!”

I was raised to believe that asking for help was a sign of weakness. However, as I have matured, I’ve come to understand – thanks to some strong tutoring from my husband – that asking for help is actually a sign of a strong and emotionally healthy person.

It’s not that I need help making dinner. Cooking is the easy part for me. It’s deciding what to make that’s tough. My friend Sandy once said she’d just like someone to come into her kitchen every day and tell her what to make. I completely concur! Mostly, it’s the main course I have trouble deciding on.

I always start my planning with dessert. In fact, dessert is why I invite people over for dinner in the first place. I have been thinking about making a key lime pie for ages now. The only thing stopping me was that a whole key lime pie with Roger and me alone in the house is a bad idea! We need other people around to share it with.

I knew I wanted to make split pea soup for the first course.

For the side dishes, I was craving coconut rice. And, lately, I have become obsessed with broccolini.

Broccolini is a green vegetable similar to broccoli but with small florets and long, thin stalks. Although often misidentified as young broccoli, it is a cross between broccoli and kailan, Chinese broccoli. Broccolini is a registered trademark of Mann Packing Company, Inc. The generic name is baby broccoli. I usually find it at Costco.

My favourite way of eating broccolini is to boil it for two minutes. Then I rinse it under cold water. At this point, you can just set it aside on the counter for several hours. Just before sitting down to dinner, I heat up about two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan. I add a half-teaspoon of red chili flakes and one finely minced clove of garlic. Stir chili flakes and garlic around for about a minute and then throw in the broccolini. Toss broccolini around in the frying pan until it is lightly browned and heated through. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot, warm or even at room temperature.

OK, so first course, side dishes and dessert were set. What I really wanted to say when my friends asked what they could bring was, “Yes, I’d love it if you could bring the main course!” But, if my mother ever found out I did that, I’d be drummed out of the Feingold corps. We are a strong independent family! We don’t invite people for dinner and then ask them to bring the dinner. I have relaxed my standards at the

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cottage when guests are invited for the weekend. When they offer to bring something, I will ask them to provide one meal.

My mom was horrified when she first found out I was doing that, but quickly came around to my way of thinking after being treated to the wonderful cooking of some of my friends.

I ended up deciding to make Country Captain Chicken.

That week, Rachael Ray made it on her show, 30 Minute Meals, on the Food Network. Bobby Flay also made it on his show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay. If you have never seen this show, you should tune in. Chef Bobby challenges awardwinning masters in specific recipes to a cook-off. On this episode, he challenged the Lee brothers, renowned James Beard Award-winning southern cooks.

Country Captain Chicken dates to the early 1800s. It is

Cindy Feingold thought this dish was brought to Georgia by a British sea captain who had been stationed in Bengali, India and shared the recipe with some friends in the port city of Savannah, Georgia. Savannah was then a major shipping port for the spice trade. The dish was named for the officers in India called “Country Captains.”

It is a curried chicken dish. Even people who claim they don’t like curry love this dish.

Country Captain Chicken This recipe is adapted from Bobby Flay’s version on the Food Network. Bobby makes his own curry mix for this dish rather than relying on a store-bought curry powder.

Most of the ingredients for this mix can be found at Bulk Barn.

It may be difficult to find ground fennel. Just purchase fennel seeds and grind them yourself in a small coffee grinder, dedicated to spices only.

Ancho Chili powder and De Arbol chili powder can be ordered online at chillychiles.com, located in Navan, Ontario.

You can use packaged curry powder and omit making your own curry mix, but the results will not be as delicious.

Mesa Curry Mix: 3 tablespoons ancho chili powder 2 teaspoons ground cumin 2 teaspoons ground coriander 2 teaspoons ground fennel 2 teaspoons ground turmeric 1 teaspoon ground cardamom 1 teaspoon de arbol chili powder 1 teaspoon ground black pepper Coconut Rice with Green Onions: 1 tablespoon olive oil 1/4 cup finely diced Spanish onion 2 cups long-grain rice 1 (13-14 ounce) can unsweetened coconut milk 1 cup water 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 4 green onions, thinly sliced Country Captain Chicken: 3 tablespoons canola oil 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour Salt and freshly ground black pepper 8 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed 1 medium Spanish onion, diced into 1/4-inch pieces 1 large red bell pepper, diced into 1/2-inch pieces 2 cloves garlic, finely minced 1 jalapeno pepper, finely diced 2 heaping teaspoons Mesa curry mix, recipe above 1 cup dry white wine 2 cups chicken stock 1 (28-ounce) can plum tomatoes, drained well and coarsely chopped

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1/4 cup raisins 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves 2 teaspoons honey 1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 1/3 cup slivered almonds, lightly toasted and chopped For the curry mix: Combine all the spices in a small bowl.

For the Coconut Rice with Green Onions: Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Add the onion and cook until soft, about 2 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat the grains in the oil. Add the coconut milk, water, salt and pepper and bring to a boil, stir once, cover the pot, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until tender, about 16 minutes.

Remove from the heat and let the rice sit, covered for 5 minutes. Remove the lid, fluff with a fork and fold in the green onion. Let sit 5 minutes before serving.

For the Country Captain Chicken: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Heat the oil in a large, high-sided sauté pan over medium-high heat.

Put the flour in a shallow bowl and season liberally with salt and pepper. Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper, dredge in the flour and tap off any excess. Sear the chicken on both sides until golden brown. Remove to plate.

Add the onion and bell pepper to the pan, season with salt and pepper and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and the jalapeno pepper and cook for 1 minute.

Stir in the curry powder and cook for 1 minute. Add the wine and cook until reduced by 3/4. Add the chicken stock, bring to a simmer and reduce slightly. Stir in the tomatoes, raisins, thyme, honey and season with a little salt and pepper and bring to a simmer.

Nestle the chicken thighs into the pan, cover with a tight fitting lid and bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Remove the lid after 35 minutes and continue to bake an additional 15 minutes.

Remove the chicken to a platter and tent slightly to keep warm. Put the pan and sauce back on the burner over high heat and bring to a boil. Let the sauce reduce slightly, then season with salt, pepper and additional honey if you think it needs it. I added about 1 more tablespoon. Stir in the parsley. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and top with the almonds. Serve with Coconut Rice with Green Onions.

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Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010 – Page 27

Graphic novels set in 1942 show what kids can do Graphic books offer readers an immediacy that is hard to duplicate in novels without pictures. Time, place, setting and tone are immediately conveyed in dynamic artwork.

While enclosing dialogue in balloons may remind many of us of old-fashioned comic books, contemporary graphic novels depict far more complex themes and sub-themes than the comic books of my day ever did.

Resistance Book 1

By Carla Jablonski Illustrated by Leland Purvis :01 First Second 128 pages. Ages 12 and up.

In Carla Jablonski’s note at the end of Resistance Book 1, we read that the French resistance during the Second World War was multi-faceted. Some was highly organized, some a matter of opportunity by one or a few individuals.

In one instance, a person might have appeared to be a collaborator. In another, that same person might have acted as a rescuer.

Resistance Book 1, the first volume of a planned trilogy, takes place within that complex setting. What you see or think is not always what is. It is 1942, a time when Vichy France, the part of France supposedly not under direct Nazi German control, is beginning to feel more and more like Occupied France.

Still, tranquility prevails in the country village where Marie and Paul Tessier live.

Or, does it?

Paul and Marie’s father is a prisoner of war. Their mother has taken over the hotel previously owned by their friend Henri’s parents. Henri and his parents are the only Jews who have been in the village for a long time. And what about Louise and Lucie threatening to denounce kids who tease them and wondering if a new girl in town, someone’s cousin from Paris, is Jewish?

When Henri’s parents disappear, Paul and Marie hide Henri, even though Marie has no idea what a Jew is or why Henri is in danger just because he’s a Jew. Their behaviour causes Jacque, a vineyard worker, to wonder what they are up to while they wonder what Jacque is up to.

Paul and Marie instinctively protect Henri. But how can they keep it up? By, somehow, getting help from the Resistance. Imagine their surprise when it turns out the Resistance needs the children’s help too, providing they can pass a test. But, what does a test about Banana Breath

Kid Lit Deanna Silverman

and Monkey Face mean?

Readers are in for many more surprises, including a makeshift Bar Mitzvah, before Marie, Paul and their older sister undertake a mission that involves a train trip from Vichy France to Paris, in Occupied France to deliver both Henri and coded information.

Sombre in colour and tone, Resistance Book 1 is an exciting adventure story about friendship, courage and the need for everyone, including children, to make difficult choices under dangerous conditions.

As we teach our children about the Holocaust, we must remember to teach them also about those who fought back, Jews and non-Jews, adults and children. Resistance Book 1 is an excellent starting point.

City of Spies

By Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan Illustrated by Pascal Dizin :01 First Second 176 pages. Ages 10-14.

City of Spies is as different from Resistance Book 1 as books set in the same time period and dealing with similar themes can be. Whereas the mood in Resistance Book 1 is full of angst, City of Spies uses fluff, fantasy, humour, romance and pastry – yes, pastry – to build to its frightening climax.

Set in the Germantown neighbourhood of New York City, the story features 10-year-old Evelyn Weiss, her ultra chic bohemian aunt, Lia, her new friend, Tony, and flatfoot, oops, policeman, Brendan.

Although Evelyn and her family are Jewish, she knows little about being Jewish. What she does know is that Hitler hates Jews and that the radio and movies are constantly warning Americans to be on the lookout for Nazi spies.

What better place to look for spies than in Germantown?

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By Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan Illustrated by Pascal Dizin

When she isn’t looking for spies or getting in trouble, Evelyn is cartooning. Her new adventures of superhero Zirconium Man and his sidekick, Scooter, who looks suspiciously like Evelyn, are interspersed with the spy story. By the way, guess who Zirconium Man looks like? Yep, Evelyn’s super rich, mainly absentee father, who warns her to stop being a “screw up.�

Come to think of it, Evelyn is not the only “screw-up.�

The same can be said of chain-smoking Aunt Lia, Tony, policeman Brendan, and the spies. Sometimes loopy, often ingenious, City of Spies is a delicious, exciting, stereotypically funny romp through codes, drops, empty houses, isolated cabins, murder, mayhem and mystery. In other words, City of Spies is an action-packed winner!

Page 28 – Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – April 26, 2010

WHAT’S GOING ON April 26 to May 9, 2010 WEEKLY EVENTS SUNDAYS Mazeltots, sponsored by Westboro Jewish Montessori School, for ages up to 4 years, 192 Switzer Avenue, 10:00 am.

Info: 613-729-7712.

MONDAYS & THURSDAYS Motorin’ Munchkins gym drop-in for children aged 1-5 years with parent or caregiver accompaniment, sponsored

by SJCC Ganon Pre-School, 9:00 am to 12:00 pm. Info: 613-798-9818, ext. 280.

CANDLELIGHTING BEFORE April 30 May 7 May 14 May 21 May 28 June 4 June 11

✡ ✡ ✡ ✡ ✡ ✡ ✡

7:49 7:58 8:06 8:14 8:22 8:28 8:33

pm pm pm pm pm pm pm

TUESDAYS Israeli Folkdancing, learn dances, have fun, no experience or partner necessary, Hillel Academy, 31 Nadolny Sachs Private, 7:00 pm. Info: 613-722-9323.

WEDNESDAYS Coffee Club for parents of children up to 3 years. Chil-

For more community listings, visit ottawa.planitjewish.com

dren play, parents enjoy coffee and conversation, sponsored by SJCC Ganon PreSchool, 9:00 to 11:30 am.

Info: 613-798-9818, ext. 280.

Chill and Grill BBQ, sponsored by Chabad Student Network, for students and young adults, 29 Gilmour Street, 6:00 pm. Info: 613-601-7701.

SUNDAY, MAY 2 Multifaith Housing Initiative Tulipathon Charity Walk, people of all faiths walk to provide affordable housing for low-income households in Ottawa. Registration at 1:00 pm, Commissioners’ Park, corner of Preston and the Driveway.

Info: 613-686-1825.

FRIDAYS Shabbat Shalom with SJCC Ganon Pre-School, for children up to 5 years with parent or caregiver accompaniment, 9:30 am. Info: 613798-9818, ext. 280.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 5 Celebrating Partnerships on Parliament Hill, sponsored by Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, featuring Chef Oved Alfia from Israel and the Canadian Tenors, West Block, Parliament Hill, 3:00 pm. Info: 613-829-3150.

JET’s Jewish Unity Live 18th Anniversary Event with special guest speaker Lori Palatnik, comedian Marc Weiner, and honouring 18 dedicated individuals, National Gallery of Canada, 380

TUESDAY, APRIL 27 Malca Pass Book Discussion Group features Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill, with reviewer Sophie Kohn Kaminsky, Agudath Israel Synagogue, 1400 Coldrey Avenue, 7:30 pm. Info: 613-829-2455.

Sussex Drive, 7:00 pm. Info: 613-798-9818, ext. 247.

Drive, 6:00 pm. Info: 613-5219700.

FRIDAY, MAY 7 Sephardic Shabbat Dinner with speaker, Congregation Beth Shalom, 151 Chapel Street, 5:45 pm. Info: 613789-3501, ext. 223.

SUNDAY, MAY 9 Mother’s Day Chinese Buffet, Congregation Machzikei Hadas, 2310 Virginia

Happy ’s Day Mother

COMING SOON WEDNESDAY, MAY 12 Jewish Federation of Ottawa Members Meeting for representatives of affiliated agencies.

The public is welcome to attend, 7:00 pm.

Info: 613-798-4696, ext. 236.

Unless otherwise noted, activities take place at The Joseph and Rose Ages Family Building, 21 Nadolny Sachs Private.

This information is taken from the community calendar maintained by the Jewish Ottawa InfoCentre. Organizations which would like their events to be listed, no matter where they are to be held, should send the information to InfoCentre coordinator Benita Siemiatycki via e-mail at bsiemiatycki@jewishottawa.com or fax at 613-798-4695. She can also be reached by telephone at 613-798-4644. Accurate details must be provided and all events must be open to the Jewish public.

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Condolences Condolences are extended to the families of:

162 Cumberland Street, Suite 300 Toronto, Ontario M5R 3N5

The CONDOLENCE COLUMN is offered as a public service to the community.

Penny Bar-Noy Roodman Helen Clamen, Montreal (mother of Murray Clamen) Leslie Fireman Nathan Keyfitz, Cambridge, MA (brother of Ruth Karp) Estelle McCarthy, Richmond Hill (mother of Stuart McCarthy) Solange Ohana, Montreal (mother of Viviane Ohana-Sandlers) Rita Ryant Gordon Viner

For a listing in this column, please call Carolene Preap, 613-798-4696, ext. 232.

May their memory be a blessing always.

Voice mail is available.

There is no charge.

www.romspen.com

BULLETIN DEADLINES MAY 5 FOR MAY 24 MAY 26 FOR JUNE 14

JUNE 30 FOR JULY 19 JULY 28 FOR AUGUST 16 AUGST 11 FOR SEPTEMBER 6* SEPTEMBER 1 FOR SEPTEMBER 27 SEPTEMBER 22 FOR OCTOBER 11 * Community-wide Issue (all dates subject to change)