Roz and some dedicated volunteers put out cat cages, and she recruited other volunteers to look for Bruno, including me. (Recently, I became one of Roz’s board members.) It was indeed 2 a.m.

Roz came by to pick me up in her proud yet dishevelled mobile office, with notebooks, cages and food scattered throughout. I smiled as I always do with Roz, because I am so incredibly proud of her for doing what she loves, and for doing it well.

I told her we had to first stop at an all-night convenience store for some hot chocolate. We did. So there we were, in the wee hours of the night, hanging out in front of that store, sipping a hot drink and shmoozing. At 49 years of age, that made me very happy. It’s good to hang.

She told me how sad she was that Bruno was out in the cold alone.

You think to yourself, “Cats? That’s nuts. Why would anyone give time to saving a cat when they could save or help a person?”

Roz might agree with that, or something close to it. Her love for cats, she told me, enhances her love for people. Animal activists like Roz are refreshing, because many of them are so stridently anti-human. But Roz isn’t like that.

Five years ago, she started rescuing cats, fostering them out and then finding them adoptive homes – or “forever homes,” as she calls them. Later, she was instrumental in launching the first Canadian spay/neuter clinic. Recently, Roz orchestrated the amalgamation of two cat rescue organizations. She is a pioneer, an innovator, a not-for-profit entrepreneur in an industry dotted with some very extraordinary people.

Like the prophets who loved animals – such as Moses, who went after a lone sheep – Roz is a compassionate and resourceful animal lover. She’s the real deal. She should run the Humane Society.

It was cold, and standing around meant fidgeting in somebody’s backyard in the middle of the night. The cat wasn’t waiting for us in the cages. They were empty. But slowly, meticulously and with soft, loving care, Roz placed a folded blanket under the cages so the metal wouldn’t freeze, and therefore the cat wouldn’t, either.

We drove up to my condo at 3:30 a.m. and talked for a little while. Roz was still melancholy because Bruno was nowhere to be found. But, she said, “maybe he will be soon and things will be alright.”

I told her to read the story of Jacob, who didn’t know if Joseph, his son, was dead or alive and, therefore, couldn’t mourn or celebrate – a terrible condition for a loved one to be in. She did. It helped. We talked about the importance of developing a philosophy of suffering.  

Despite all the fun that people have at her expense – calling her “cat lady” – Roz has never wavered from her dreams, her very humane and compassionate dreams of rescuing, fostering, adopting out and protecting the cat population.

So if you see the bushes in your backyard moving late one night and start to reach for your rifle, look more closely. It might be a very special person acting out her dreams, repairing the world while whispering to a wild cat, “Everything will be OK.”

It might be Roz Gelade.

Well the gangs were angry with him for trying to prevent recruitment in his neighborhood. So they murdered him. But who killed him? Read below.  Three teens. Three kids, two of whom are 16. 16 years old! That’s it.

We need to be up in arms about this. Kenneth was a genuine warrior, a courageous man, some would call a hero. Right here in squeaky clean Toronto he was gunned down by kids, for helping to save kids. We need to be  up in arms about this and figure out how it is that such an execution could happen here; could happen to such a good man; was perpetrated by kids — and mostly, how come we’re not royally pissed off…angry, figuring this o ut.

This our town and the guy we all hope to be was murdered. He and his family need our response. What is it? Where is it? What do you think? Come on. Let’s figure this out.  It is so terrible. So terrible!

________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Two teens charged in Kenneth Mark slaying By ROB LAMBERTI, Toronto Sun

14th January 2010

Kenneth Mark was slain on a Toronto street Dec. 29, 2009. Two teens are charged with the assassination-style murder of a west-Toronto activist. Lamar Skeete, 19, of no fixed address, and a 16-year-old boy, who can’t be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, were arrested Thursday morning without incident and charged with first-degree murder in the Dec. 29 slaying of Kenneth Mark. Toronto homicide detectives are continuing their manhunt for a third suspect, who is also 16 years old. Mark, 29, was gunned down as he left a Dundas St. W. pizza shop near Runnymede Rd. and was headed for work at a nearby Wal-Mart. Det. Hank Idsinga said the younger teen was captured this morning in Etobicoke while the older teen was arrested in the City of York. He said both were arrested without incident. Police haven’t ruled out the possibility that his death may be related to when Mark was wounded in a shooting on Sept. 2, 2008. He was hit in the back with birdshot and two teens were arrested on attempt murder charges. The two accused in that trial were acquitted last.

We Jews have referred to them as Righteous Gentiles, in the context of the Holocaust – those non-Jews who saved Jews at their own peril. I’m curious, how many courageous Jews there are?

 Inherent to this formula is the reality that 98% of people won’t.

Oy.

I say oy to that. 98%. So you live in a village of 5000 people, and battle breaks out with your neighbor. Let’s call it Rwanda. You know based on this formula you better watch and cover your back and those of your children because only 100 people will step up; will hug, hold and hide you….and 4900 won’t or will do the opposite.

Our task, we who are free and aware of such numbers, is to ask ourselves: are we part of the 2% or the 98%?

What can we do to adjust this crazy-ass reality? Well done to Mia Farrow, to Miep, and God bless all of us because, as there was much work to do in the fifth, seventh, tenth etc. century to bring about a peaceful and loving world – so is there now.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 Miep Gies died this week at one hundred years of age. Ms. Gies was an employee of Otto Frank before becoming friends with his entire family, including its youngest member, Anne Frank. For two years beginning in 1942, Gies and her husband Jan Gies hid the Franks, her dentist, Fritz Pfeffer, and the Van Pels family — eight people in all, from the Nazis in Amsterdam.

Ms. Gies, a Catholic, risked her life to keep the eight alive, bringing them fresh food, books and newspapers. In 1944 they were betrayed by an unknown informant and taken to concentration camps. Again risking her own life, Miep Gies went to Gestapo headquarters and tried in vain to secure their release by offering money. Anne — by then, 15 — and her older sister Margot died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

Otto was the sole survivor of the Frank family. Ms Gies gave him Anne’s diary which she had saved and which became, after the bible, the best selling non-fiction book in the world.

I had the great privilege of spending time with Miep Gies in New York and in Amsterdam. I was eager for my children to meet her, and to try to learn what it was within her that caused her to do these extraordinary things. Why Miep Gies? Why Raul Wallenberg? Why Schindler? And most importantly, why not everyone?

Miep shed no light on her decisions. “Of course it was not easy,” she told me, “But what else could I do?” The profundity of her response lies in its simple ordinariness. For Miep, there were no other options. She could not have done otherwise.

I have a Rwandan friend who survived the 1994 genocide but lost most of her family and was witness to unimaginable atrocities. Based on what took place in her country, she calculates that “95 percent of people will pick up a machete and kill strangers and friends alike for 90 days. This we know. Three percent — they don’t want to kill, they will run away” she told me.

My friend’s words dropped me into the bleakest silence. But eventually I thought, Two percent! That’s not zero! We have something to build on.

Miep Gies always insisted, “I am not a hero. There is nothing special about me.” I respectfully disagree. Ms Gies was among the ‘two percent’ who set the bar, show us the way, and help us all feel more hopeful about being human.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mia-farrow/post_483_b_420492.html

__________________________________________________________________________

(CNN) — Miep Gies, who ensured the diary of Anne Frank did not fall into the hands of Nazis after the teen’s arrest, has died. She was 100. Gies was among a team of Dutch citizens who hid the Frank family of four and four others in a secret annex in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during World War II, according to her official Web site, which announced her death Monday. She worked as a secretary for Anne Frank’s father, Otto, in the front side of the same Prinsengracht building. The family stayed in the secret room from July 1942 until August 4, 1944, when they were arrested by Gestapo and Dutch police after being betrayed by an informant. Two of Gies’ team were arrested that day, but she and her friend, Bep Voskuijl, were left behind — and found 14-year-old Anne’s papers. “And there Bep and I saw Anne’s diary papers lying on the floor. I said, ‘Pick them up!’ Bep stood there staring, frozen. I said, ‘Pick them up! Pick them up!’ We were afraid, but we did out best to collect all the papers,” Gies said in a 1998 interview with The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. “Then we went downstairs. And there we stood, Bep and I. I asked, ‘What now, Bep?’ She answered, ‘You’re the oldest. You hold on to them. So I did.” The girl had chronicled two years of the emotions and fears that gripped her during hiding, as well as candid thoughts on her family, her feelings for friend-in-hiding Peter van Pels, and dreams of being a professional writer. Mixed into the entries were the names of the Dutch helpers, who risked their lives to keep the family’s secret. “I didn’t read Anne’s diary papers. … It’s a good thing I didn’t because if I had read them I would have had to burn them,” she said in the 1998 interview. “Some of the information in them was dangerous.” The diary was sheltered in Gies’ desk drawer and later turned over to Otto Frank when he returned after the war as the only surviving resident of the annex. Anne died at northern Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Her father published her diary, titled “The Secret Annex,” in 1947. Despite the legendary hardship she endured during the German occupation, Gies never embraced the label of a hero. “More than 20,000 Dutch people helped to hide Jews and others in need of hiding during those years. I willingly did what I could to help. My husband did as well. It was not enough,” she says in the prologue of her memoirs, “Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family.” “There is nothing special about me. I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time.” Gies’ husband, Jan, whom she married in 1941, died in 1993. The couple had a son together.

She was a prostitute. A whore. A sex-trade worker and homeless. She was the type of throw-away woman homicide officers might scoff at, had she been murdered.

But she wasn’t. In fact one day soon she’ll be a certified social service worker.

From 1997 to 2005, Theresa Schrader, now 33, walked the streets around Islington and Lakeshore exchanging sex for cash with Toronto’s johns. Once the job was done, Theresa would gather herself and hurry off to her dealer.

Theresa Schrader was a crack addict, big time. Whitney Houston was right when she said, “crack is whack.” It is a highly addictive substance that actually cracks the lips and often empties the wallets and lives of those using.

It did. That’s all Theresa had. No home, sex for pay, crack for the day, and tomorrow — the same desperate schedule.

Theresa was born in Parrsboro, N.S. and raised in Liverpool, N.S. She was thrown out by her adoptive mom at 18. At 22, her newborn son was taken from her by Children’s Aid. At 23 she handed over another child.

Theresa’s life was horrible. Fate made it so. She helped it along.

One day Theresa bought a gun, planning to kill herself on Christmas. Eminem, the rapper, wrote in a song rock-bottom is when “this life makes you mad enough to kill.” In Theresa’s case her victim would have been herself.

On the way to pick up the gun the cops stymied her plans by arresting her for a misdemeanour. Theresa called that moment “divine intervention.” While in jail she decided suicide would ruin her holidays.

Had Theresa killed herself on that holy day it would have made sense. According to prostitution.com, a nonprofit organization that conducts research on prostitution, 75% of sex trade workers will attempt suicide. Theresa had tried before.

AWARD-WINNING PIECE

The study states: 80% of prostitutes have been raped, sometimes 10 times a year. Theresa was brutally raped by a john, a crime she describes in her award-winning piece for a creative writing contest for the homeless sponsored by Ve’ahavta.

Such is the life of a prostitute. Such were Theresa’s days and nights. She was a dishevelled and melancholy soul.

But that was then.

Today Theresa, through sheer bravery, support and thought, has stopped street walking and smoking crack. After years of abusing, Theresa accomplished something as difficult for a “normal person” to do as fighting off a fierce lion. She grew.

In 2009, Theresa is taking the Social Service Worker Program at George Brown College. She is raising a handsome three-year-old son with her “village” in Cabbagetown.

Theresa is a regular public speaker at the Toronto John School and through Voices from the Street, a charity facilitating public speaking for former homeless people. She is a mentor for women who walked the same streets she did, and has won countless academic awards from places such as the Yonge Street Mission.

Theresa, who will be a certified life coach at the end of June, is launching a consulting business and just aced her first mid-term exam.

Here is a snapshot of a girl who was abused, bullied, alienated, incarcerated, beaten, bruised and high on crack cocaine for a decade. Here is the life of a woman who was often with 10 men in a night.

Here is a short story of a beautiful human being who today is a role model for many men and women, a supported and supportive mom, a student, volunteer and multiple award winner.

Theresa is getting ready once again to reveal her tricks. This time on her website, where she will instruct other women how to gather the courage to get out of the trap she fell into. Stay tuned.

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/2009/11/02/11601391-sun.html

(This article appeared online and in the Toronto Sun newspaper on November 2, 2009. It is a piece about my friend, Theresa, who acted as my team’s Street Advisor during ’3 Days on the Street’…a time in August, 2009 I spent with the homeless. Theresa shows us how growth works. Her life reflects the reality that no matter how bad it gets, or almost, humankind has the ability to come back, to make things better. I don’t purport for a moment to think that everyone’s situation allows them a better life. That would be irrational, but I would say that Theresa’s situation was  pretty lousy and she did it. So give it a shot, if you think your life stinks.

Ya Theresa. Way to go! You inspire us all!)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rick_smolan_tells_the_story_of_a_girl.html

Mr. Dressup

Mr. Dress Up was a Canadian children’s television series which was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1967 to 1996. Read about him, Casey and Finnigan (his puppets) in Wikipedia. Mr. Dress Up was once a guest on my radio show -Marty & Avrum: The Food Guys. It was one of the greatest moments of my life!! Do you have memories of Mr. Dress Up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Dressup
]]> http://avrum.net/2009/04/14/i-love-mr-dress-up/feed/ 2 avrum mr_dressup1 http://avrum.net/2009/04/10/im-single-and-will-never-go-to-another-seder-until-im-married/ http://avrum.net/2009/04/10/im-single-and-will-never-go-to-another-seder-until-im-married/#comments Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:10:04 +0000 avrum http://avrum.net/?p=678 ]]> From a reader of my weekly Canadian Jewish News ( www.cjnews.com ) column. If you don’t get the CJN call 416 391 1836 and order it. It’s a most interesting newspaper, while not being very controversial or wading out into deep waters; it is informative and plays a key role in our community as a unifier of all the denominations, organizations and scattered individuals. This is not a paid advertising I grew up on the CJN, then was given the gig of my lifetime – writing on their backpage. It is my comfort reading.

________________________________________________________________________

I enjoy reading your column in the Cdn Jewish news.  I was just wondering if you could write a column about a “small” problem that no one ever talks about.   I’m a single woman with no children and no family.  I am sometimes invited to a friend’s family Passover Seder, and have gone.  I do however, find it extremely embarrassing to be issued a “charity invitation” to these functions, and always feel like an outsider since usually family stuff is discussed at these holiday events.  I have vowed never to go to another Seder until I get married because it really is uncomfortable to sit at another family’s table as an outsider.  Relatives are all kissing each other and talking about insider stuff, and you’re sitting there like an idiot “pity” case.  I don’t know how unique my situation is, but just curious if there are other singles out there who don’t go to Seders for the same reason.  I don’t know if this issue is important enough for a column, but just wanted to run it past you.

________________________________________________________________________

Question: How much does it suck to be single? Or, is being single just a perfect life-style?

You know I feel terribly for this writer. Of course there is truth in the idea that you become a ‘pity case’ when you perceive yourself as such; but the other truth is, it feels so lonely when you want to love someone, or you want to be loved…you want to be in love. Drag. It’s amazing, you know, the Talmud says it is as difficult for God to find a match for someone, as it was for Him to split the sea. Imagine.

So when a match is made it is miraculous. And miracles are always beautiful (can you think of a popular miracle, like splitting of the sea, that is ugly?)

BTW…I tend to think that miracles are actions that happen outside of the rules of nature….a spiritual and mystical Bewitching

We wish her well and that she finds her b’sheret (Yiddish for soulmate) as early as tomorrow! 

I sat in the corner of a room in my home listening to a conversation between two people I knew, one who was poor, the other, rich.

The poor man asked the rich man, “Do you really worry about money? I mean really worry? And if so, just sell the business and build a house, ‘with one long staircase just going up… and one even longer coming down…’ and fill your yard ‘with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks for the town to see and hear.’”

The rich man laughed. “Yours is a complex question. You know, I have more money than I need. My great-grandchildren will spend their days learning, or writing poetry if they so choose.

“But for your information, I wasn’t always rich. In fact, I am like the Jews born in the dessert who later crossed into Israel. I found my ‘milk and honey’ only after I had a very intimate relationship with scarcity. I therefore regularly remind myself of my mazel and that I am deserving of my riches, by carrying a note in my wallet which reads: ‘Moses described Israel to the Jewish people saying that it is rich and fertile, blessed with many streams and springs and a wide variety of flourishing food crops…. You shall eat and be satisfied.’ (Deuteronomy 8:10).

“My friend, a mortgage is of no concern to me as it was to my parents who lived on Oxford Street. I give 10 per cent of my earnings to tzedakah, but know, this is not always a pleasure. Trust me” – he smirked – “the joke about the impossibility of a rich Jew remaining deserted on an Island is true. The charities that help Israel and people in need will always find you.

“Yes, I do worry about money. But I am a rich man – this is my lot – and watching geese in my yard is not my calling. I am on this earth to create prosperity and I would not change that.”

The rich man paused, smiled politely and asked the poor man, “What is it like for you to be poor?”

The modestly dressed fellow replied, “What you ask is complex. I am comforted by the fact that poverty is not a Jewish value, and not a disgrace. After all, the great Hillel was a woodcutter, and his resume is quite impressive.

Many years ago, I accepted that I was not born into a rich family and my dream to ride on a 100-year-old turtle on the Galapagos Island, will forever be only that. My children have a Jewish education and, in part, I am thankful to generous gentlemen like you. For this I am also ill at ease, because man needs to grow his own garden. The complaints of the well-protected Jews in the dessert were evidence of this.

“Mostly, I agree that God determines our purpose on earth. I therefore see your assistance as His gift and am sorry to tell you” – he chuckled – “I am more thankful to God for my children’s education, than I am to you.

“And like you, I carry a simple note in my wallet, reminding me we are all created in the image of God – rich, poor, royalty and peasantry.”

The poor man made his way to the door. He looked back at the rich man and asked, “Tell me, do you ever feel guilty about having so much money, when so many others have so little?

The rich man’s touched the Magen David around his neck and quietly replied, “I do.” He looked deeply into the eyes of the poor man and asked, “Do you ever resent the affluent?”

The poor man nodded his head ever so sadly and whispered, “Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

______________________________________________________________________

Please comment: Are you rich? Are you poor. Do you resent the other? Do you always dream about being rich? Do you fear being poor? Why do you dream about wealth? What makes you so scared about being poor?

I asked him why he didn’t use the garage next store to our office, a warm and dry place.

David told me that he didn’t want to sleep in that garage, yet, out of respect to Patrick who used that garage as his home, and fell ill there recently from pneumonia.

 He was found by another fellow living on the street, taken to the hospital, and died shortly afterwards.

Respect. It comes in such different shapes and forms.  (My son’s Mom was really good to Patrick. They had a nice friendship too. She teaches our little boy about people living on the street, so that he gets it at his stage of life).

I spoke to another guy I know who used to be homeless.

He is now homeful. His skin looks so healthy as he’s kicked drinking, smoking butts, and using drugs. He told me that people are still knocking on his door, asking him if he wants to come out with them and smoke some crack. He says, “naw! Not interested.” It seems that Sam has cleaned himself up. He’s on a really great road and looks so happy.

So don’t think that people can’t change, or adjust.

We can and Sam is a good example of that. I know you are saying, ‘will it stick’. Well that’s a question we can ask of ourselves as well.

Life is life. Maybe his changes will grow into even greater changes, or maybe he’ll fall back. That’s not the point. He did pull himself out of his muk and that is a lofty thing. He has done something that most of us will never do. (I know that I have a very difficult time pulling myself out of my shit. I have stuff going on inside of me that I have been trying to change for years).

So when people ask me why don’t the homeless ‘just pull up their socks and get a job and move inside,’ I say, why don’t  you? Why don’t you deal with your stuff as you expect him/her to do. Some people get it. Some don’t.

I’m proud of Sam. I so feel for David. And I’m sad about Patrick.

Exquisite! How generous it is to be privy every single year to the first moments when Yitzchak, our patriarch, and Rivkah, our matriarch, gazed upon each other. What a stunningly romantic and titillating landscape of love, one in which we are biblical voyeurs of a blind date that works, and of the actualization of some of the most powerful drives and needs within us – love, romance and companionship.

In this blog post I am playing the matchmaker my goal being to share information about a friend, a most distinctive and exceptional woman, who is also seeking true love and romance. I hope a reader will come in from his field, “lift up his eyes” and like Yitzchak, find his Rivkah.

The woman I speak of is vivacious and exciting, with an eagerness to soar.

She is is a traditional Jew who is enamoured by the iridescent flames of the Shabbat and Chanukah candles and the questioning nature of Judaism. My friend has a vibrant personality, buttressed and bolstered by the richness that comes with turning 50.

She is calming yet persuasive; peaceful but rambunctious; and childlike in spirit yet seductively feminine in her gait and cleverness.

Like the biblical matriarch Leah, the wife of Jacob, my friend’s eyes are tender and reflect a humanitarian kindness – a look I have also detected in the eye of her two grown teenagers. As the Torah says about the matriarch Sarah, the wife of Abraham, she too is “beautiful to look upon” and expresses an internal splendour – each of which enhances the other.

This is my friend. She is a writer of films, plays and short stories. She studied German and Yiddish. She is a conversationalist extraordinaire and stands in awe and wonder about mystical ironies such as the coloured metamorphosis of a leaf prior to its fall and demise.

We are currently reading the book of Bereshit, which is filled with glistening perplexity, lustrous creativity, and romance and love. Love is in the air, and it is upon the lips of those who study this book and its complexly simple characters.

I am the matchmaker and happily present my friend to you. I hope that this article will culminate in you, the reader, mimicking Yitzchak by bringing my friend into your tent, so that the two of you may find, nurture and embrace romantic love, forever.

My friend is seeking a man who is on a personal journey. He should have a well-developed sense of soul, and he should inspire and seek inspiration, and hunger for love.

If this is you – if you see her image through my words, sense the profundity of her character and think you might be her Yitzchak please comment. II will do my utmost to broker your mutual love, no shidduch fee required.

“I believe that the important thing in life is to love and be loved.”

 – My Friend

Please comment on this blog post.  You gotta know somebody for this lovely person. C’mon on. Remember what it was like to find your b’shert – your soulmate

I often watch older people in the street, or in a mall, and wonder if they ever feel sexy, or attractive to others. I’m sure this has cultural components to it but in my hometown Toronto, where society is not generally expressive about attraction to others, how must seniors feel?

What is it like to be ‘old’? Any thoughts? Let me know if you would like to be interviewed, or no somebody who might.  Meanwhile, check out this blog  – As Time Goes  By – qualified as, “What it’s really like to get older.” Fascinating!  

http://www.timegoesby.net/

_________________________________________________________________________

Often when I stop by a convenience store or a small business, or ride a cab, I wonder about the people working “the floor,” where there is little hubbub. Do they have the drive to express an idea publicly, one that might be mulled over by others, and are they are missed when they take time away from their job?

I am intrigued by the “quiet people.” In a short story that I once wrote titled Goat’s Tails and Cow’s Feet, I called them “headless drivers.” By that I meant that there are people who drive by me on the street each day who live their own full lives, yet we’ll never truly intersect. I see them, but I’ll never know them. To me, they may as well be have no heads.

When I engage such people in conversation, the inevitable occurs. We enter into meaningful talk about things such as family, politics, food and religion. I like to test the waters and sometimes toss out a tidbit about Israel. I figure it’s my chance to be an emissary, and/or to get a pulse on what’s going on in the street in regard to us.

Many of these headless drivers are often not really so quiet. Despite the fact they don’t rage publicly about the ills of society in a newspaper column, they have much to say, and they articulate it well.  

Most recently, I launched into a discussion with a Christian woman living in northern British Columbia who counsels native Canadians. She’s not a trained therapist, but she’s been sharing her wisdom for 20 years and has garnered the trust of Aboriginals in that area – not an easy feat. She has no website, and she looked at me strangely when I asked her if she had ever been honoured for her work.

We are gala people, but not everyone else is.

I, like you no doubt, enjoy my taxi rides, not only because I get a chance to be mobile while closing my eyes to think distant thoughts, but because I can talk to a stranger about rare and intimate things with little or no risk. It’s part of his or her job, and I sense that these headless drivers are the last great conversationalists in the world.

While in Ottawa recently, an Iranian cabby told me that his first girlfriend was arriving in Toronto for a visit. She wanted to see him. She had never stopped loving him. I advised him against seeing her. He is a family man. I gave him my card and asked him to let me know what he decided. I was curious. He responded, “We’ll see. I might.” I told him I understood and we parted ways. He was a friend for a moment – as he would be to dozens of people that day – and that was the way it was supposed to be. He was clear about that.

I knew I would never see him again. That was fine, however, because I learned something from this quiet person. He shared with me the intricacies of his familial relationships and the senselessness in testing the genuine spirit of his marital love. He didn’t need my advice. The Iranian taxi driver knew a pile more about relationships than I do.

I’m lucky that I write this column, and there are those who notice when I’m not around. But the same can be said about the quiet Filipina woman behind the counter at my favorite coffee joint. I know when she is absent, and many others do as well.

It could be that the quiet people, the headless drivers, might just make their mark while serving another cup of coffee or travelling another quarter mile.

We really don’t know what non-Jews think about us. Such information seems illusive. Yet, I would hazard to guess if we asked 100 Jews their opinion on such a matter, the overwhelming response would likely be: they consider Christian churches its leadership to be, as a whole, anti-Jewish.   Certainly there is enough evidence to support this belief, however it is our experience that there are many Christians who have positive and warm feelings for the Jewish people. In that light, the following are some snippets from a speech given by the very prolific minister, Victor Shepherd, the pastor of Streetsville United Church, in October 2001, when he spoke about a moment he shared with an older Jewish man. His words were sincere and his feelings for the Children of Israel were upbeat. I bring it to you because it’s important to know who our friends are, especially at a time when our enemies are as ugly and perilous as the sludge at the bottom of our lakes.   “…And then there are the men and women I meet in ways that leave me amazed. It happened to me with most poignant profundity when I went to a funeral at Temple Sinai. Because I had arrived 45 minutes early, I went to a Jewish restaurant, Marky’s Delicatessen, for a cup of tea. I noticed there were no seats available, and I was the only man without a hat on. All the other men were wearing either a yarmulke or a fedora. I waited for a minute, not knowing quite what to do, when at the back of the restaurant an old, thin Jewish man with the warmest smile and the face of an angel moved over on his seat and beckoned to me as he called out, ‘There is room for us both!’ “My heart melted. I had grasped the double meaning he had uttered deliberately when he had said, ‘There is room for us both.’ I sat down beside him and we began to talk. He told me his older sister brought him to Canada prior to World War II. He and his sister were the sole survivors of his family. I asked him what he had done for a living. ‘I was a simple peddler. I went door-to-door peddling tablecloths, sheets and pillow cases.’ “He said he was born in southeast Poland, in a small ‘insignificant’ village with a famous rabbi. ‘It’s a tradition,’ he continued, ‘that a rabbi remains in the place where he begins his work. Now, a minister has to go wherever he is sent. But our rabbi stayed in our little village, even though he could have gone anywhere at all, because the tradition meant more to him than the money; and besides, he loved us so much.’ “I then told him I was a minister. ‘Oh, I knew that already,’ he said as if it need not have been mentioned. It was spirit resonating with spirit “In view of the fact that words like ‘minister’ and ‘Christian’ are synonymous with persecution going back for centuries in Poland, do you have any grasp of what grace floods that old man’s heart for him to have said to me, ‘There is room for us both’? He knew I represented that institution which has afflicted his people for centuries. “I’ll not see that dear man until the day when Messiah tarries no more. But for my meeting with him I shall thank God for the rest of my life. Today my heart overflows in gratitude to God for the people whom he has brought before me, people from the big city as well as the tiny village in southeast Poland, not to mention soul mates because of whom I shall never be forsaken. “Knowing the One whose depths are unfathomable and whose gift of himself is inexpressible, I am rendered ever more grateful for people whose richness is inestimable and for a universe whose wonders are endless.” (www.victorshepherd.on.ca) It’s important to know who our friends are. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Question: What happens to the character of a humanbeing that allows them to become so cruel they can laugh at somebody suffering? Where has humanity gone wrong? How do we correct this?

I recently bought a book on Holocaust resistance.   In it was a picture of a man in the French underground about to be executed by the Nazis. As he stood at the corner of a building (so the bullets would not ricochet), he smiled a big smirking grin at the evil killers, as if remembering a joke.   In another picture a Jewish man was running from the Gestapo with a terrified look on his face, while members of the secret state police smiled and laughed as they rounded him up with other Jews in Amsterdam.   Two smiles. Two meanings.     I was struck by the picture of the French resistance fighter who simply looked back at the Nazi murderers without fear – his body language suggested he was loose and at ease. I concluded that right up until the point when he would fall over lifelessly, the man remained steadfast in this world, mocking his murderers as if he had revealed a full house to their flush.   He didn’t seem to be praying, meditating or pleading, but instead, stayed in his role of a resister until his end – fighting as a Jew while death came to transform him.   The other picture broke my heart. Imagine the fear this man felt while being chased by those owards dressed in black, form-fitting uniform jackets, black breeches tucked into jack-boots polished to imperfect perfection, and black hats with glossy visors (so strange they look so clean, being so filthy and all).   Imagine, being laughed at while you run for your life. Imagine those who are laughing. What happened to them?    The poor, poor Jewish man. No doubt he knew his life was to change in a split second, the way you would if you saw a transport truck bearing down on your car, and he ran, fearing for his next moment, while the others – like soulless bullies on a school hill, sneered and played with his life as if he were a corroded can to be kicked and crushed on a sidewalk by the side of the road.   What do we learn from these pictures, these two juxtaposing smiles?   Perhaps we learn from the man about to be executed that there can be victory in death, triumph when one does not succumb to fear when the barrel of a gun is pointed at you.   Maybe at the time of death, his acts of courage and bravery liberated him from suffering.   Socrates said that the cosmos is grounded in goodness, that a good person cannot suffer unduly, and that death is not something to be feared.   What of those pursuers, the ones snickering at the poor Jew? What can we determine from them? Evil has no conscience, and the noises it makes and its expressions are the opposite of what they seem to mean.   This is described well on wikipedia.org. It says: “An evil laugh is a stock megalomaniacal laugh by a villain in fiction. Some protagonists have been known to use an ‘evil’ laugh, either as a product of mental instability or merely to display a feeling of significance as a villain would.”   Two smiles. Two meanings.     We are all born with the ability to smile. A three-month-old baby will show you that. But a smile is not always an expression of joy or friendliness, and that is the confusing thing.   We understand how the Frenchman smiled so near to his death. Yet, many of us still grapple with the smile that is etched on the face of an evil man? Saddam Hussein had such a smile when he was about to be hanged. Why?   Notice a smile that causes you to feel happy. Trust it. Be aware of the smirk that puts a chill in your body. It might be wicked. Be conscious of both.   Two smiles. Two meanings.

By Avrum Rosensweig              Published in Haaretz.com

I was born into an Orthodox Rabbinical home, and am the only son of fve children.

My childhood was unique. It was because my Father, of blessed memory, Shragah Phyvle Rosensweig, was one of the originals, a Jewish cleric in a small community in Kitchener, Ontario Canada, who believed that actualizing ones Judaism required a Jew to be out in the world, in the front lines of Ve’ahavta – loving thy neighbor.

When my sisters and I were young we would often accompany my Father on his weekly visits to a minimum security jail near our home, in a smaller city called Guelph. Of course we were never able to go into the jail cell area, but would instead sit in the hallway on an uncomfortable, old rickety chair terrified we would be abducted by a jailbird trying to break out. (Great story – ‘Rabbi’s son Kidnapped in Daring Jail Break’. I have Huckle Berry Fin sort of imagination.  It worked better when I was hanging from a branch over a creek.)

In my mind’s eyes I can see my little legs dangling over the chair inches away from the aged tiles, and kicking back and forth a tad more aggressively when a prisoner would walk by, his hands cuffed behind him, and legs shackled. I remember quivering and thinking at nine years old, “those guys look so young and so terribly sad.”

By virtue of love, my Mother, Gitel Rosensweig, was/is a Rebbetzin. What I mean is: my Father worked long and hard for his rabbinic ordination, studying the laws of ‘milk and meat’ and doing endless Rabbinic gigs in small venues. He had a love affair with the Jewish people and Torah and committed his life to tending to the Jewish flock the way great men do. His accomplishments were vast, his pioneering spirit was intense. I am Avrum the son of Shragah Phyvle who died in 1989 at 61 years of age. I am lucky to be proud of my Father. Not everyone is. 

My Mother, however, secured her title of Rebbetzin through love and accepted this title when my Father smashed the glass under the chupah, in accordance with Jewish law. 

So when the phone would ring in our home at 3 a.m. and the voice on the other end would say “Rabbi come quickly, my child is missing”, both my parents jumped out of bed. My Mother would pull a suit out of the closet for my Father to wear, and my Father would prepare himself for the ordeal. She would walk with him to the door, no doubt with her arm slipped through his, asking him to call her at regular intervals. I don’t know if he did or not.

 I recall waking one night, I was seven years, old and hearing boisterous singing in our living room. Tiredly, I moseyed out into the hall, peered into the living room and saw a jovial bearded man sitting on the couch, playing guitar, eyes turned heavenwards as he so sweetly, so passionately, sang a most pleasant and stirring song.  My Mother told me his name was Shlomo Carlbach as she hurried off to ensure all the university students sitting around Shlomo and my Father were made to feel comfortable.  My Mother had five children in six and a half years, she was a teacher, a councilor, a speaker and wore many hats as a Rebbetzin in small community, and did it so well.

My parents as a rabbinical team were the real deal. There was certain invincibility to the way they peddled their spiritual wares and a purity of spirit which allowed them to see the big picture yet act as the ‘regular folk’ spiritual leaders.

Ingo F. Walther, in a Tashcen publication about Vincent Van Gough, writes about the artist’s time as a minister in a coal mining town prior to his pursuit of painting: “He had given his clothes to the needy…lived in a tumbledown hut…in Van Gough’s view, ‘loving one’s neighbor could know no limits.” (Vincent Van Gough, The Complete Paintings, P. 40). In Van Gough’s world there were no ivory towers.  He had a ‘self-sacrificing spirit.” Such were my parents. Rarely did they have time to roll down their sleeves; barely did they find time for themselves.  They worked hard.

A sturdy Rabbi is a warrior. A first-rate rebbetzin is a champion. Embrace your Rabbi and Rebbetzin as their commitment and connection to you and your community is likely a powerful one. Rebbetzin and Rabbi of the Year!  Now there is an idea for a good Jewish gala honoree.   

My four sisters and I were shown early on that the outside world beckons us, and when the needy, the poor and the marginalized reach out it was our job, regardless of our age, to respond to them. We were taught that when we saw a beggar in the street, to kneel down, look in her eyes and ask them per their welfare. Those whom others called ‘stray dogs’ or ‘strange people’ were human beings who needed a hand or a place to nap in our home.  

As I told my Mother the other night, this lesson was the grandest they (my parents) could have taught us. I once heard about a study determining why righteous gentiles (non Jews honored by Yad Vashem for saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust) risked being killed, or having their family murdered to save a Jew. Across the board, those courageous people responded  they had been taught by their parents, as youngsters to get their finger nails dirty when someone needed help, regardless of who they were; to look at all humankind as being created equal. That was us, the Rosensweig clan. Our lesson on chesed (kindness) was magnificent, one I hope to duplicate with my two year old son, Noah River.

 One day, my Father came home and introduced us to Linda, a Jewish woman whose boyfriend rode with the Satan’s Choice, a biker’s club. He wove a story of great drama on how he had rescued her from this band of thieves. As he told it to me, he entered their hideout by crossing a dirty threshold strewn with garbage and trash. Once inside he let the vagabonds know ‘the place was surrounded’ and Linda would be coming with him. Was it true? It doesn’t matter.  As a kid my Father was my hero and like the children’s story of the owl who told his wife a questionable account about having to fight off an eagle in pursuit of a field mouse, I was proud. My pride was my reality.

Despite the fact we lived in a small house on Lydia Street with no air conditioning and three bedrooms for the seven of us, Linda became part of the family. One Friday night, as we sat around the Shabbat table, somewhere in the middle of Shalom Aleichem (a song welcoming the Shabbat), we heard a great roar of motors growing louder and louder.  My Father stood up, walked over to the window and looked outside. The Satan’s Choice was parked on our driveway, grass and walkway.

We had grown used to crazy situations including death threats being the rabbinical family in a city which had once been called Little Berlin because of the large population of Germans who had settled there after the Wars. I recall, as a five year old boy, having just started kindergarten being called a “Christ killer”, and chased and threatened by excited young children of anti-Semites, I guess young anti-Semites. On the last day of kindergarten, six and all grown up, I came home from school, looked way up at my Father and said, “Dad I’m not wearing my kipa (skull cap) to school anymore.  I can’t.” He said, “Okay”.

We heard a knock at the door and my Father opened it. A very tough and unpleasant thug filled the frame, backed by one of his Hench men, and announced his name was ‘Little Joe’. He said he had come to discuss Linda’s whereabouts and her return to the Satan’s Choice. My Father looked squarely in Little Joe’s eyes and said, ‘My friend if you want to come in, you’ll first take off your leather jacket and boots. This is a respectable home. (My Mother tells me, Little Joe’s assistant was caring a knife and she commanded him to put it away.  The woman is fearless!) Little Joe seemed to have a begrudging respect for my Father’s position as a cleric, the way mobsters do with for their Priest, and complied.

What happen then depends on the narrative you choose to listen to, my Mothers, my sisters or mine. My mother tells me, my sisters and I had police protection.  I don’t remember that, but I do recall the Shabbat light flickering, and the spirit of that holy day surrounding us, while my Father, who appeared in my eyes to  be eight feet tall with the guts and bulk of the Hulk, refusing to budge on Little Joe’s request for Linda’s return. 

Eventually the ‘Choice’ revved up their Harley’s for the entire neighborhood to hear and tore off into the Kitchener night. My Father told me later, charges were pressed against Little Joe for various crimes, and the biker went to prison. The kicker was it was the jail my Father would visit every Friday and the story as he told it too me included the colorful fact that Little Joe would often see my Dad as he passed his cell and yell out to him, “How are you Rabbi? It’s good to see you”.  No doubt my Father returned the salutation. He believed manners were important.

Sometime when my parents were at a local celebration, perhaps a Bar Mitzvah or wedding, Linda would babysit us, her boyfriend Wayne would come by and give us all rides on his Harley, helmet free, the wind blowing through my seven year old hair. Linda lived with us for two years, and showed her appreciation by absconding with my parent’s credit card and loading it up with $2,000 in expenditures.

But taking Linda in was a mitzvah, a fulfillment of the Jewish value to help the needy among you and my Father never stopped bringing them home, and my Mother never stopped taking care of them. This was their way and this is what I was witness to growing up. It was quite something. “Without a love of humankind there is no love of God.”  (Sholem Asch)

A Rabbi, Rebbetzin, a biker and Helmuth.  They were all part of my upbringing and there was nothing boring about it. It wasn’t all good as you could imagine. Ask any Rabbinical child if they had enough privacy as children and the answer will likely be ‘no’. I didn’t. Ask them if they were able to just be, show their character including the blemishes and the not so holy stuff, to come down off the high  pedestal the community can put you on, and the answer will likely be ‘absolutely not’. I wasn’t.