Ode to the Canadian Jewish News by Avrum (May 5, 2013)

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

Dedicated to Meyer and Dorothy Nurenberger, founders of The CJN

Shabbat dinner was winding down, and the family’s guest excused herself from the table. She lay down on the couch in the den and adjusted the pillow so her head was propped up sufficiently to read The CJN – her favourite publication.

“The Six Day War was a military miracle,” she read. The entire issue covered the war. She learned about Jewish bravery. She also learned that community members had lined up to give their jewelry to the United Jewish Appeal for the war effort. The guest dozed off and The CJN slipped onto the floor.

Monday morning came. Oded gulped down his breakfast. Shoe sales were dipping, and he had to make it to work early. On the way out, he noticed The CJN on the floor in the family room. He put it in his briefcase. The subway was busy, but he found a seat.

Oded opened The CJN and flipped to Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut’s commentary. He had known little about the “Boat People” from Vietnam, other than that Canada was embracing them as refugees. Rabbi Plaut eloquently weaved a story about a family that had arrived in Toronto the week before, sponsored by the Jewish community. The man smiled and stuffed the paper in his briefcase.

The woman took a break from her sewing machine. She had filled her quota of shoes and wanted to review the advertisements in the Jewish newspaper the boss brought to work every week. She took a seat in the lunchroom. She read: “Good family in the Manor looking for full-time help. Hours and pay excellent.” Her sister had just arrived from Italy. She tucked the ad into her pocket and would show it to her sibling later on.

Time wore on. The young man was tired. He dropped by the cafeteria and noticed The CJN on a table. Not a week went by when he wouldn’t read Canada’s national Jewish newspaper cover to cover. He was interested in everything from the community’s relationship with the government to features on the NHL’s only Jewish hockey player. He rolled up the paper and took it home.

That night he opened The CJN. The headlines shouted out: “Soviet Jews coming home.” He read about Operation Exodus, a Jewish Agency program to bring hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel. He read with nachas about the Israel Defence Forces and the American Joint Distribution Committee rescues in Azerbaijan and Odessa, and the courage of Jews assisting with Operation Exodus. It reminded him of CJN articles years earlier about the Raid on Entebbes. It was late. The man fell asleep. The CJN slipped to the floor.

Marky’s restaurant was closing. Conversion was under scrutiny in Israel again. Canadian Jewish Congress was no more. The man’s sister sipped her coffee and flipped through The CJN. A personal ad caught her eye. She was looking for a shidduch. Rosh Hashanah was here again, and she quite liked the honey chicken recipe she saw in the paper. Shaarei Tefillah was advertising seats. She saw an article about the community’s gay and lesbian High Holiday services. She circled it and made a mental note to tell her brother.

June 27, 2013. It was a cool Montreal morning. The elderly Jew waited for The CJN to arrive. The day would be long and sad without it.

Avrum.rosensweig@veahavta.org

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An Outpouring of Love for the CJN

Posted on April 25, 2013 by

“Is this progress? I think not.”  - Zale Newman

Only two short days after the announcement that The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) would close on June 20th, an outpouring of love and loyalty for the newspaper poured onto the pages of social media and in the hallways of our Jewish community.

Savethecjn.com,  an online petition was launched encouraging people to help rescue the newspaper. So far the petition has a few thousand signatures.

Glorious emails were sent by avid vans to my Facebook page such as this one from Hadley Colton, Jewish community member and CJN reader, who said:

“The CJN provides me with information I cannot  get anywhere else and for that reason I think it’s valuable and vital.” 

The National Post wrote a piece on the demise of the CJN, which can be found  at news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/22/cjn . The title shouting out from the National Post was: The Canadian Jewish News is shutting down citing changes ‘sweeping’ newspaper industry. And thesuburpan.com, the largest English-weekly in Quebec, strictly online at this point, covered the news as well.

I’ve heard from some of the CJN staff who are deeply touched by much of the sentiment expressed by readers both young and old.

I’ve heard that some very vibrant community members are working hard to create a ground-swell of support for the CJN. 

Which way will this thing go? It’s hard to say but I will state, the support the newspaper is getting from individuals of all ages and backgrounds is magnificent.  It’s true you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

The thing that stands out in my mind is how many people read the CJN curled up on their couch on Shabbat. They look forward to reading it from cover-to-cover.  This is in fact, a tradition in many homes and should auger well for the future  of the newspaper.

Share your thoughts about the CJN. Sign  the petition. Play a role in repairing our community by coming up with ideas that make sense for the next iteration of the CJN.

 

“I had no idea…and am sad and shocked…the CJN has been incredibly supportive of Jaffa Road (a Juno nominated musical band). I hope it does not fold. Print is not dead.” – Aaron Lightstone

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I love the The Canadian Jewish News and Don’t have the Heart to Watch it Die!

Posted on April 24, 2013 by

I have tremendous love for the Canadian Jewish News. I’ve been reading it since I was a little fella  and writing for it since 2001 – 12 years.

I’ve always felt it was a tremendous kavod, honor, to be a writer for the newspaper. I did because it represents our entire community and it felt as if i was central to something very important, after all I have a deep love for the Jewish people, and the Toronto Jewish community.

But this past Friday, the owners of the newspaper decided that they had carried it long enough. While I am not privy to what was said behind close doors to bring us to point of demise, I can guess that  Don Carr and the others who actually own the newspaper got tired of running a deficit publication.  I’m guessing their message to us was ‘we can’t’ or ‘wont do  it anymore.

If that is the case it’s understandable how they got tired of running  a newspaper that just didn’t cut it – ie. sell enough advertising. However, the question is being asked, and appropriately so, how come they didn’t come to the  community in one form or another and say, ‘here it  is….it’s your’s for the taking in any form you’d like….and you can do with it what you’d like.’

After all there is a CJN brand, and a mailing  list. There is something there. There are 50 staff and even if you believe that some should go, there are others who have done an excellent job.

So what now? Some groups are  coming  together, independently of one another so far, to determine how they might safe the CJN, or redesign it so that it is ‘more  current and relevant’.

How  will they do? It”s  hard to say. Like my good friend Eli Rubenstein said, ‘it’s hard to run a newspaper.’ True,  just ask Mordechai Ben-Dat (MBD) who managed to steer through some pretty big Jewish waves over the  years. Imagine dealing with the Federation on ‘fairness’ when it comes to articles covering their events. That’s not easy as the Federation isn’t known for being terribly fair, yet frequently demand fairness from others.

Consider the task MBD had to make the Haredi vaguely happy, along with the Reform Jewish community – a denomination which is slowly but surely getting royally pissed off for being virtually ignored for many years, despite the fact that  everyone was taking their tzedakah funds.

In short, the task of  making all of us happy was compatible to moving the CN tower down the block on a flatbed. It is/was next to impossible. Yet MBD ensured that we never teetered, never slipped and fell.

While there are those who maintain that indeed he was successful at achieving a certain balance within our community, he was not able to upgrade the CJN so that it reflected the color, compelling format and journalistic standards of say, ‘The Forward’. It is this group that is not unhappy to see the fall of  the CJN.

So what now? I would suggest you watch as groups band together to save the CJN. They will likely join forces at some point. I believe that they will manage to resurrect it because the idea that the Toronto Jewish community does not have a central  newspaper is just to painful to accept. 

By the way when I say we need a newspaper, clearly I’m making a  statement  about the Tribune. Indeed I am. While the Tribune has  a following it is not set up or structured in such a way that it will fill this new void. Our community is interested, by in-large in more than just  anti-Semitism, and those who hate us and right wing politics. While there is a place for the Tribune it’s difficult to make the argument that it is, or could  be the central Jewish newspaper. It just doesn’t have the moxy, coverage or interest in highlighting gay and lesbian Jews, next to articles on Bobov or even the BAYT synagogue.

We are in for a most interesting ride. Become part of this change. Don’t sit on the sidelines on this one. If you love the newspaper and have benefited  from it than find your niche and get involved. There is only one thing more annoying than demise of the CJN and that is the voice or e-messages of those who write about it  and refuse to lift a finger to save  it or rebuilt it from scratch. This  is  a big  deal folks.

A very big deal. Save the CJN. Let’s make this a community venture.

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Yom Hazikaron (CJN Article, April 12, 2013)

Posted on April 12, 2013 by

Tell me your thoughts on this article I wrote about sacrificing oneself for your country, more specifically, Israel. Would  you sacrifice yourself for your country? – Avrum

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Growing up in Canada, we often ask ourselves at some point what is sacred to us and what we might die for. Of course, democracy, freedom and the Canadian way of life are generally the values thought of. This belief system, however, is mostly tested only during times of war. Nowadays the farthest thing from the minds of our Canadian children is that they will one day have to fight to preserve our way of life. We feel safe, and not surprisingly, embrace this country knowing that our progeny will likely not have to go off to war and, God forbid, be killed.

Living in Israel is different.

When children grow up anywhere in Israel, they will say: “I will fight and die for the State of Israel, democracy, and for all Jews.” The thing is that along with a young person’s answer comes the knowledge that as he or she grows, there is a likelihood this value will be tested.  If you are born in Eretz Yisrael, you will likely serve in the Israel Defence Forces. If you do, and a war breaks out, which happens every few years, you could find yourself on the frontlines and at the other end of the enemy’s gun.

Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembrance in Israel, speaks to this point. Essentially, as the siren goes off the night before and again the following morning, and that most uncomfortable sound bellows throughout the nation, the collective thinking is directed toward those men and women who were once children and accepted the responsibility of being Israeli Jews, and because of that, paid with their lives.

On Yom Hazikaron, when citizens from all corners of the state visit the graveyards of their sons and daughters, they also recall the Israelis who walked into a nightclub in Tel Aviv or attended a Passover seder in Netanya and were met by a bomb wrapped in nails and ball bearings intended to kill as many Jews as possible. They remember the victims of terror.

On Yom Hazikaron, April 14 to 15 (Iyar 4), it is important that, as Canadian parents and children, we consider, as well as we can, those we are remembering and why it is so important to do this. We remember the 26,000 people killed in Israel through war and terror since Jews were able to live outside of the Old City in the mid-1800s.

We are all called upon to think about the sacrifice Jewish Israelis and Bedouins are called upon to make as soon as they exit their mother’s womb. Similarly, we are encouraged to think about the parents who decided to start a family, to give birth to a little boy or girl knowing full well that in 18 short years, a blink of an eye, the infants will walk away from their home with a machine gun hanging from their shoulder wearing fatigues meant to be as nondescript as possible, designed to make these sons and daughters look alike – because that’s what armies require.

On Yom Hazikaron, consider all of this, and then remember that the very next day, Yom Ha’azmaut, Israel Independence Day, is celebrated.

And therein lies the special consciousness of our Israeli brothers and sisters. They are prepared to fight and die for Israel and our Jewishness, and we will celebrate until dawn because they are alive today as their children understand what is required of them – to give their lives if necessary.

Avrum.rosensweig@veahavta.org

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A Jew Living in a Car

Posted on April 4, 2013 by

Do You Recall Rochelle,  ” A Jew is Living in Her Car ” ?

Some seven years ago a moving article was written on my behalf  by Avrum in the Canadian Jewish News in an effort to save my life. I was an accomplished health professional who due to a then poorly understood medical condition, was compelled to live in my car in the deep freeze of our harsh Canadian winter.

As a culmination of my genetic make-up with that of several contributory variables ( (over-prescription of antibiotics, excessive exposure to strong pesticides and toxic mold ), my body became so internally toxic that it could no longer tolerate ANY toxins in the environment.

The term used to describe this condition by most medical experts is that of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, (MCS). The only place I was able to fully control to ensure my safety was that of my car. It wasn’t that I could not afford a conventional residence …the bottom line was that what I really required was an MCS safe environment – namely a small, reasonably priced bungalow that was somewhat isolated.

Avrum was my lifeline at the time and was one of the first to listen, understand, and feel compassion for my plight, Thanks to him, I was put in touch with five ‘shelter angels’. These very special people endowed with love, empathy, and warm supportive homes embraced me at my most vulnerable state. They provided me with safe shelter, and so much more. Loving relationships were formed with each and every one of them that will last a lifetime.

Much to everyone’s surprise, I was able to ‘ give back’ with all of my heart and soul almost as much as I was humbly able ‘ to take’  from them.

Most important , as a result of their combined financial and  spiritual generosity, I was referred to the proper doctors who hastily made the correct diagnosis. Since that time I have made remarkable and steady progress. For this, I am so grateful for each and every effort because now I am continuing to make progress in my recovery. My goal is to be self reliant once again as I return to my profession.  

True to the nature of the condition, there is still a ways to go, but what I need now most of all is a safe home environment – preferably one of my own.

Able to work part time, I am in need of a home whose occupant(s) can be trusted to ensure my continued health and safety.. 

I am seeking to rent a small housing unit, in or around the Toronto area, with no toxic or chemical fragrances, pesticides,or herbicides used on or around the property or used by close neighbors. An individual unit or shared housing in a chemical free, mold free,environment would be considered. Shared housing should include a private bath/shower and a fragrance/chemical – free laundry area. Initial modification may seem to be an effort but the people involved have admitted that it was well worth the effort, being viewed later more as a labor of love.

I have a modest but secure income and am able to provide excellent references. I am a person of integrity – honest, clean, friendly, refined, dependable, and responsible with a good sense of humor. As in the past, I am certain to bring enhanced health, engaging companionship and much joy to any home. In short, ‘a win- win’ situation for all concerned.

If you believe that you may be able to fill me in on such a house, cottage or suitable home environment, please respond to Rochelle at :  jehuditrc@gmail.com    at  your convenience,  but please, as soon as possible would be appreciated as time is of the essence with this request.

Thanking you all once again for your attention, concern and support,   

Rochelle       

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THE JOSH COMMITTEE – WE NEED TO FIND A FAMILY TO ADOPT A 10 YEAR OLD CHILD!!! PLEASE READ

Posted on April 3, 2013 by

http://www.cjnews.com/columnists/josh-committee  (Canadian Jewish News, April 3, 2013)

Do you know someone who will adopt this child?

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The following is the job of our entire community. Please post.

All of us have to work to find a “forever home” for a 10-year-old Jewish boy, whom we’ll call Josh. OK? Please, consider yourself part of a committee, which we’ll call the Josh committee, an entity that cannot be disbanded until this child has what you and I have – a “forever family.”

I think that’s fair.

For two years, Jewish Family & Child (JF&Cs) has worked arduously to find this enthusiastic, handsome and intelligent child a home. Throughout that time, Josh has been in two foster homes. Both have given the little guy outstanding marks for behaviour, ability to love and to be an integral part of a family.

But foster parents, God bless them, are not forever. It is therefore up to us, the Josh committee, to get Josh adopted.  So what’s the challenge? After all, according to adoptioncanada.ca, there are 40 qualified couples for every infant placed for adoption and only two per cent of children born are put up for adoption.

The tough thing is, Josh is 10 years old, and according to JF&CS professionals, many Jewish families want to adopt children but look for babies.  OK, so Josh is 10. What’s the worry? Well, he doesn’t have a “forever home,” so he can be somewhat insecure. There are some medical issues, but nothing insurmountable. It’s more expensive to adopt a 10-year-old, for sure, but the government and JF&CS have adoption subsidies to assist Josh’s “forever parents,” should they need it.

Basically, people figure because Josh is 10, he’ll come with a whole set of problems. I haven’t met Josh, but those warriors at JF&CS assure me he’s nothing less than “delicious.” I believe them.

I believe our committee’s mission statement of finding a “forever home” for our fellow community member is holy. Rabbi Benjamin Hecht, the director of the Jewish educational organization Nishma (www.nishma.org), told me that while Josh is not an orphan, he is to be taken care of like one.  That’s a big deal. This imperative, to embrace the orphan, is repeated throughout the Torah many times as in, “You shall not cause pain to any widow or orphan.” Exodus 22:21.

Further, according to Judaism, an adopted child is considered a full-fledged family member, and he/she is duty bound in the laws of death and mourning in the event of lost parents. In essence, by adopting Josh, by making him family, you are finding your son.

Remember when you read: Anne of Green Gables, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, Little Men, Oliver Twist, Pollyanna, and the story of Wart in The Once and Future King? Do you recall how your heart opened for those children without parents and how you just wanted to take them home and hold them?

That’s Josh!

So, if you’ve considered adopting a child or you know someone in your contact list trying to make a family, call them and tell them you’re on the Josh committee. Let them know they can learn more about this “delicious” community member by contacting Marsha Urowitz at JF&CS at 416-638-7800, ext. 6306.

The Josh committee will report back to you through this column. Make Josh your son. Find him a “forever home.” Maybe it’s yours.

Josh is “friendly, charismatic, loving and inquisitive. His smile and big blue eyes are hard to resist.”  – Sheryl Ederman, practice team manager, JF&CS

Avrum.rosensweig@veahavta.org

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Hating Jews, Hating the Roma (Avrum’s CJN Article, March 1, 2013)

Posted on March 1, 2013 by

Hating Jews, hating the Roma

Only recently have I started to learn about anti-Roma (Gypsy) sentiment.

I’ve read the books, listened to hateful radio shows hosted by such angry people as Ezra Levant and talked to people involved in the Roma community and people outside of it. This education helped me to understand what antisemitism is all about.

We didn’t have a homeland. The Roma still don’t. The Conservative government recently ran an advertising campaign in Hungary to tell the Roma not to come to Canada. Hungarian leadership responded by saying, if any Roma left Hungary for Canada and were rejected, they could not come back. At that moment, it became clear to me what homelessness as a people meant and how it must have translated for our grandparents living in Germany and Poland. They were destitute. They were without protection. They were hated. That is the Roma in 2013. Actually, they are despised.

In my mind, I saw a Gypsy in 2012 begging for a country to embrace them as world citizens, as creations of God. This vision looked terribly similar to a Jew in Germany in 1933, 1934, 1935… in 1945. The Jewish children, the Roma children, looked to their father for safety. He returning their gaze, saying, “We have nowhere to go.”

The Roma are second-class citizens, and they are vermin in the eyes of the world, just as we were. In the 1930s, our children were kicked out of school. Today, culturally biased psychological testing often leads to non-disabled Roma children being place in schools for the learning disabled. The Roma are targeted by the Canadian government, just as we were.

In 1948, the Jewish People legally secured a homeland – Eretz Yisrael. Countries like Canada stopped messing with us.  That was not the fortune, however, of the Roma, who lost 500,000 of their people during World War II (some say more than one million). They remained stateless wanderers and were denied reparations by the German government.  They, therefore, continue to fight for the safety of their children, unlike us, who have established ourselves in Israel and around the world. We have it made; the Gypsies did not.

At 52 years old, I am utterly aghast at what our people went through during the war, and before and after. In many ways, the suffering of the Jewish People is synonymous with that of the Gypsies and the terrible experiences they are enduring throughout Europe and now in North America.  I am astounded at the directed toward the Roma. Stunned.

We must defend the Roma. We must stand behind them when called upon to do so; protect them by standing in front of them when they need cover, and walk hand in hand with them until the world embraces their rich culture and sees them as brothers and sisters, equal in the eyes of God and human within the psyche of all nations.

We said, “Never again.” What did we mean? Our Torah says 39 times, “Know the stranger,” because we were slaves in Egypt. How will we explain this to our children on Pesach?  Invite a local Roma to your seder. Call Roma Centre director Gina Csanyi-Robah at 416-561-0770. She’ll help. Or support International Roma Day on April 8, by attending a music fundraiser on March 13 at Lula Lounge in Toronto.

Ask our government, why it is targeting the Roma? Then ask yourself what Holocaust education taught you.

 

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