The CJN February 10, 2023

The lessons learned from getting a supermarket in Prince Edward County to host a birthday party for a 4-year-old

/ Ellin Bessner

Some children dream of having a birthday party at Disney World, while others might covet a party room at a local movie theatre with Frozen loot bags for the guests.

But four-year-old Lev Goldfarb wanted his celebration to be an adventure down the grocery aisles at his favourite local Metro supermarket in Picton, Ont.

It was early January when the Israeli-born youngster asked his mother Hadas Brajtman for the unlikely “Metro Party.” She’s the head of the fledgling Jewish community in the rural community on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The family moved to Canada from Tel Aviv in 2019, shortly after Lev was born, to be closer to her parents who live in the area.

Brajtman approached the managers at the Main Street store with her son’s unusual request. To her surprise, they jumped at the chance to do it—after a quick check with the head office for approval to cover insurance.

But what would a “Metro Party” consist of? The challenge involved

coming up with a two-hour program that kept toddlers both busy and safe.

What the supermarket came up with was a meeting with the butcher and a tour of the meat coolers, refilling the produce counter with fresh bananas, and a treasure hunt where Lev and his little guests raced to find a list of weekly specials including El Paso taco products and Charmin paper towels.

“That was the only time throughout the entire experience where I [thought] ‘This could maybe go south’ because they did run up and down the aisles a little bit,” admitted Paul Jones, the assistant manager who planned the day’s schedule. “But everyone was very well behaved and nobody got hurt.”

Jones, 29, has no children of his own—or even nieces or nephews—but he managed to come up with plenty of ideas to keep the seven kids entertained, while their delighted parents captured it all on their smartphones.

The assistant manager even joined in on the cupcake decorating, where he learned a thing or two himself, as he admits he isn’t much for cooking when he gets home to his two cats after a long shift at the store.

“Big mac and cheese guy,” he said, smiling over Zoom during an interview with The CJN Daily.

Jones and his boss, Murray Lupenette, reunited with Brajtman to talk about how their connection has sparked more ideas for Metro. One shopper now wants to have his 60th birthday party there—if

the store gets a liquor licence.

But for Lev’s mom, who works in marketing for a local heritage site in Picton known as Base31, the gesture is also sparking more of a relationship with the area’s 100-member Jewish community.

Brajtman launched her own Israeli food catering business after first moving there, and many of the Jewish holiday celebrations are held in her backyard or in rented space.

“I always knew there was an issue with getting kosher and Jewish food, and I just assumed that it wasn’t something that was going to happen, you know?” she said, noting that she had just brought up the topic to Metro management.

Lupenette said his location used to rely on another store to do the ordering for Passover. But now, Picton’s store is planning to stock kosher products year-round. The community is compiling a list of their top food requests for the managers to consider, along with the possibility of yahrzeit candles.

Whether it’s the request for her four-year-old’s birthday party being fulfilled, or thoughts about what to add to the aisles being considered, Brajtman believes there’s an important takeaway here for all occasions.

“Dare to dare to ask.”

Toronto Police outlined how they are combatting hate crimes at a synagogue townhall meeting

/ Samantha Goodman

Police in Toronto say they are doubling down on efforts to combat hate crimes that target the Jewish community.

The details were revealed at townhall meeting on public safety, Feb. 5 at Adath Israel Congregation. Members of Parliament and representatives from the Toronto Police Service (TPS) were present.

“We recognize that the Jewish community continues to be targeted for hate-related crimes, so this year we’ve decided to add investigators to our hate crime unit. One of them is here,” said Deputy Chief Lauren Pogue, a 34-year veteran of the TPS.

She pointed to Detective Kiran Bisla, a detective with the TPS Hate Crime Unit. Bisla’s role is to investigate all hate-related incidents and crimes. A hate crime is a criminal offense committed against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by hate, bias or prejudice against an identifiable group. This includes investigations where materials or hate speech are being disseminated.

The unit can only investigate a charge if a formal complaint is filed. Once the complaint makes its way to the unit, it is reviewed and a decision is made whether it constitutes crim -

inal charges.

“In order to combat hate, we require knowledge of what’s happening,” Bisla said.

She encouraged community members to report any hate crimes that they see. The Hate Crime Unit can be reached through Intelligence Services at 416-808-3500.

“We ensure that these reports are being taken seriously. Hate crimes are a service priority that we’re committed to investigating and educating the public in this area.”

One issue raised by a community member was anti-Israel protests that have occurred downtown and what the TPS is doing.

“We have a Charter right to protest,” said Staff Sergeant Mike Cosgrove, “but if there is an immediate threat to people’s safety, that is of paramount importance.”

Cosgrove said all their officers have body cameras to record information from different perspectives.

He also pointed out that the investigation doesn’t start and end at the moment of the protest. Sometimes, charges can be laid after the fact.

In this case, Bisla said context is important when it comes to hate speech. She provided the example of a speech made in another language. It will be translated and transcribed, then investigated for hate speech. If it is classified as hate speech, charges can be laid.

Antisemitism on social media was another topic of concern that was raised by a member of the audience.

While this is more difficult to prosecute because of anonymous accounts and individuals living in different countries, Bisla said Toronto police can still investigate what is reported to them.

Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino also called on social media to step up and disallow hate from permeating on its sites.

“We need social media to step up. We all sign a user agreement and we all agree to the terms of that. As part of that agreement, there’s an obligation that there isn’t any abuse or harassment,” he said.

The federal government is also involved in preventing antisemitic attacks before they even start, Mendicino said.

For example, the Security Infrastructure Program (SIP), administered through Mendicino’s department, provides funds for items such as cameras, security systems and safety training for community leaders.

Cosgrove said the TPS has also created a neighborhood community program to support safety efforts.

This program sees selected officers work for a four-year commitment. These officers confront issues such as general crimes, hate crimes and community engagement.

Toronto Police has also created a Jewish Community Consultative Committee for further dialogue on community safety.

As well, Cosgrove recently joined UJA’s quarterly security meeting group alongside Detective Bisla.

“It’s important to keep up with the community at that level,” he said.

He encouraged community members to visit the Toronto Police’s website to review policies and procedures on protests and hate crimes. The citizen online reporting mecha -

nism is also on the site.

“If you are seeing something that is alarming and troubling, don’t assume that someone else has reported it. It’s very important for you to connect with us,” Cosgrove said.

For example, he said there was antisemitic graffiti that appeared in the Bathurst Street and Steeles Avenue area last month. Once he was aware of this incident, he instructed officers to go into high visibility control and canvas the area.

The goal was to provide assurance that police are aware of the incident and actively protecting the community.

Meanwhile, governments are also focussing on education. The Ontario government introduced Holocaust education for Grade 6 students, starting next fall, Mendicino pointed out.

“We need dialogue and education. There is no one government that is going to solve it but we need to work together. We’re seeing more education built into the curriculum in the province of Ontario and this is something we should see across the country.” n

Students are waitlisted for Birthright Israel trips as funding drops and fewer spots available

/ Samantha Goodman

Layla Artzy went on Birthright’s website to register for a trip to Israel the first day applications opened and the site crashed.

The next day, Artzy, a second-year student at Queen’s University, and the six friends that she applied with, received emails that they were on the waitlist.

“We were so taken aback that we all applied and didn’t even get a spot even though we were on right away,” she said. Artzy and her friends are not alone. At least 2,700 others received a message to join the waitlist for Birthright this summer.

Birthright Canada had 720 spots for 3,420 applicants this summer, reaching its limits just two days after registration opened Jan 16. Previously, approximately 2,000 Canadian par-

ticipants went on Birthright trips every year. This year, there are only 1,200 spots for the year.

Birthright Israel is the largest educational tourism organization in the world. Founded in 1999 by philanthropists Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt, Birthright offers free guided trips to Israel to young adults aged 18 to 26.

This year, spaces are extremely limited due to a 30 percent rise in costs per participant as a result of inflation and funding cutbacks.

Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson, through the Adelson Family Foundation, have contributed nearly US$500 million to Birthright over the past 15 years, holding the title of Birthright Israel’s most generous donors.

At the end of last year, Miriam Adelson announced the foundation is decreasing its annual commitment nearly in half this year and halving it again next year.

With this announcement, the US-based Birthright Israel Foundation made the decision to stop subsidizing Canadian participants.

This means Birthright Israel Foundation in Canada (BRIFC) must now cover one-third of the cost, with the remainder coming from the Israeli government. The total cost for the trip is $6,000, according to the Canadian foundation.

“We consider this time in our program’s history as an opportunity to invite new Canadian donors and past donors to step up their support. This program has more than two decades of proven success, an entire generation impacted. We owe it to the next generation to provide the same opportunity,” said Chaia Berkowitz, director of BRIFC.

Berkowitz said the foundation is going to raise the additional funds by casting a wide net with an education campaign around the country.

“Many people hear the name ‘Birthright’ and immediately think ‘free trip’ but it’s not free, it’s a fully subsidized gift and that gift comes with a cost which is where our foundation plays a pivotal role in securing the majority of the funding,” she said.

The goal is to get back to the pre-pandemic numbers. For now, these cuts will impact young Canadians looking to travel to Israel.

“We are concerned that the recent cuts to Birthright will have a detrimental impact on our work, and the students we serve,” Jay Solomon, chief communications officer at Hillel Ontario, said in an email.

Jewish students who return from Birthright trips have a stronger tie to Israel and often form the core of Hillel’s student boards, he said.

Hillel Ottawa director, Sasha Kathron, knows this well.

“I told our students to get on the Birthright site and apply as soon as it opened,” she said.

“Basically, the message is that if you can get on a trip, go!” said Kathron.

As for Artzy and her friends, they decided to skip the waitlist and try again for next summer. “Birthright is the kind of thing that as a kid everyone is like ‘of course you can go on Birthright’ and now it’s just not really like that anymore,” she said. n

Samantha Goodman is a freelance news correspondent for The CJN.

Obituary: Roslyn Swartzman, 91, was a respected artist and inspiring teacher in Montreal

/ Janice Arnold

Roslyn Swartzman, a respected Canadian artist whose work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée des Beaux-Arts du Québec, died on Feb. 5 in Montreal. She was 91.

Swartzman, who was primarily a printmaker but accomplished in other media, taught generations of budding artists, some of whom went on to successful careers, at the Saidye Bronfman Centre School of Fine Arts (SBC) in Montreal.

She was a member of the prestigious Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Swartzman is being remembered as an inspiring, but tough, mentor who demanded the best from her students, as she did from herself. She was a teacher and later head of the graphic arts department at the SBC from the mid-1960s until 2006 when its fine arts school closed.

Informally, she and her late husband Monte were known as generous and vivacious hosts, equally to lifelong friends and new people in their circle.

Born in Montreal in 1931, Swartzman née Sheinfeld began her art education in the late 1940s at the Montreal Artists School studying under the renowned Ghitta Caiserman-Roth and Alfred Pinsky, continuing in the 1950s at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts where she came under the influence of such Canadian luminaries as Arthur Lismer and Jacques de Tonnancour. She specialized in printmaking at Montreal’s École des Beaux-Arts with Albert Dumouchel, one of the most influential Quebec printmakers of his time, in the early 1960s.

Swartzman exhibited her work nationally and internationally in more than 30 group and 20 solo shows, beginning in 1959. In 2006, the SBC (now the Segal Centre for Performing Arts) presented a retrospective of her 40-year career in prints, as well as painting, sculpture and drawings.

A lover of the outdoors, Swartzman often drew upon nature as a theme, such as in the abstract landscape series The Northern Prairies and Prairie Winter, which combine etching with her distinctive embossing.

Her public commissions in Montreal include Oiseau de feu (1991), a 22-metre-long abstract wall sculpture with 81 pieces of brightly painted aluminum that hangs in Place Bonaventure. Others could be found in the Alexis Nihon Plaza, as well as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and Congregation Chevra Kadisha-B’nai Jacob.

“She was a renaissance woman who loved life, lived intensely and dedicated her life to the pursuit and teaching of art,” said friend Adina Weinstein. “Rama (as she was known by those

close to her) was always at the centre of our group of friends, hosting get-togethers, dinner parties, book clubs, weekends in the country and taking up the cause of Israel.”

Friends and acquaintances recall fun-filled gatherings at Roslyn and Monte’s home in Notre Dame de Grace, with good food and music. She and Monte, a talented amateur jazz trumpeter, were married for 71 years until his death in 2021 from complications of COVID.

They were a particularly close couple who met back when they were teens in the Labour Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair.

According to their three daughters, Leora, Mia and Elana, they enjoyed such outdoor activities as hiking, skiing and rowing, and travel to far-flung destinations.

“Her art is a representation of the strong, energetic, beautiful woman that she was,” another friend Eunice Palayew noted.

Among Swartzman’s former protégés who went on to successful careers, artist Shirley Katz said, “She was a truly original and creative artist, and an inspiration to so many students. She was my teacher, co-worker and mentor. Nobody was ever as encouraging as she was.”

Dorothy Grostern, also an artist, commented, “I shall forever be grateful to her. She was forthright, outspoken, always spoke the truth… She was an outstanding artist who loved her creativity, but in all the years I knew her, her three daughters were the first and true love of her life.” n

Janice Arnold has been reporting for The CJN from Montreal since 1976.

To mark Tu b’Shevat, close to 85 people sat down to a kosher vegan Shabbat dinner at Vancouver’s Schara Tzedeck synagogue on Friday, Feb. 3. The chef brought the mushrooms, the potatoes and the fruit from local sources. As for the plates, they were reusable, not disposable.

Then four community leaders led a discussion about environmental awareness and the deep connection Jews share with nature.

The program is part of a year-long commitment by Vancouver’s historic Orthodox congregation to be more environmentally sustainable, according to Rabbi Shlomo Schachter.

Synagogues are ditching the paper plates and installing solar panels as they make environmentally conscious choices

/Ellin Bessner

“Vancouver is one of the greenest cities, certainly in North America, and in the world. And we had a sense of our community sort of lagging during COVID,” Rabbi Schachter said, in an interview with The CJN Daily. “We’re dealing with single-use paper and plastic. And we were doing all of these things, and I said, ‘Look, we really don’t need to be doing that.’”

That’s why the synagogue signed on last spring, when Vancouver’s Jewish Federation came calling. Schara Tzedeck joined more than a dozen local Jewish sites in B.C. for a yearlong sustainability challenge under the auspices of Hazon, an American environmental charity.

The 14 Vancouver-area sites are part of the first Canadian cohort for Hazon’s “Seal of Sustainability” project. This session wraps up in March.

Other area participants include all three day schools—King David High School, Richmond Jewish Day School, and Vancouver Talmud Torah—plus five synagogues including Schara Tzedeck, Beth Israel, Beth Tikvah, Or Shalom, and Temple Shalom.x-

The JCCs of Greater Vancouver, and White Rock South Surrey are in, too, as are Camp Miriam, Hillel BC, the Jewish Federation and Jewish Family Services.

“The whole cohort has been inspiring to work with. They have brought great passion and commitment to the work,” wrote Bruce Spierer, Hazon’s program manager, in an email.

The Canadian sites each had to set up “green teams,” which then also met regularly as a cohort to share ideas and successes. At the end of the process, Hazon awards them a “Seal of Sustainability” which they can use on their websites. In the past six years, over 200 sites in the United States have completed the program

Some of the initiatives carried out by the cohort included a clothing swap at the White Rock South Surrey JCC, a rain garden at the Richmond Jewish Day School, and an expanded composting program at the Vancouver Federation building, while their daycare has acquired worms to teach children about composting.

At Schara Tzedeck, the 75-year-old building has been undergoing renovations to become more energy efficient. The work included new boilers, some heat pumps, a new roof, low-flush toilets in the bathrooms, and LED lights installed in the sanctuary.

“ I believe that it has dropped the electrical load on them by 80 percent,” said Ariel Greene, who is Schara Tzedeck’s sustainability committee chair (and yes, he does get teased about his last name).

The shul’s Rabbi Schachter has his sights set on the next major project: installing solar panels on the Schara Tzedeck roof, which he expects could generate enough green power to heat the mikveh, and maybe even put some energy back into the provincial power grid.

While support for environment-conscious policies are usually associated with more progressive branches of Judaism, Rabbi Schachter argues that Orthodox congregations like his are simply doubling down on the fundamental principles of

the Torah, including tikkun olam.

“If we understand that the will to take care of our planet is just as much part of God’s will as some of the other areas of halakhah, so this becomes an imperative that we need to answer the bell. And we have. And that’s just been the beginning of it,” he explained.

With the Vancouver cohort about to wrap up, Hazon’s next Canadian group begins their year-long journey in March, although the name of the program has changed to Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition. Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal is one of the Class of 2024, along with ten other sites in Ontario and Alberta.

“Since coming back to activities in the building [after COVID], we have also transitioned to non-disposable dishes, silverware, cups and mugs for all our activities, to be more environmentally sound,” said Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, adding that the synagogue had already planted a pollinator garden around the building to attract birds, bees and butterflies.

Their 2023 “Go Green” capital building fund campaign is seeking $3 million to renovate the structure.

Of particular urgency is converting the temple’s heating system to electricity. They hope to install a solar thermal wall that will preheat fresh air. According to the synagogue, this “is projected to save at least 11.5 tons of greenhouse gases per year” while improving ventilation.

Calgary’s Temple B’nai Tikvah will have solar panels installed on the roof of the synagogue later this year, which should provide enough green energy to fill more than 30 per cent of the building’s needs. A local energy cooperative, Bow Valley Renewable Energy, will build and install the solar panels, and sell the power back to the shul at reasonable rates.

Peter Driftmier, who heads B’nai Tikvah’s environmental committee, said going solar was something they have long wanted to do in a province that gets 89 percent of its electricity from burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

“We decided to take this action after many years of informal discussions wishing we could go solar. Our congregation members care deeply about our Jewish community and our local, provincial, and federal communities all taking action on the climate crisis in a way that responds to the urgency of emissions reductions,” he said.

“We hope that more synagogues build solar on their roofs and I hope that more Canadian Jews join renewable energy cooperatives,” Driftmeir said.

After a two-year-long renovation to their 120-year-old heritage building on Brunswick Avenue, the downtown Toronto synagogue reopened Feb. 3 with a more energy-efficient, and accessible site.

“We have an array of brand-new solar panels on the roof that are already generating green power,” said Rabbi Ed Elkin, explaining that the congregation received a loan from the City of Toronto to help them incorporate the panels into the renovation.

Aside from the panels, the restored building has better insulation, sustainable lighting, and efficient appliances. What’s

more, the contractor didn’t throw the old bricks away–they were reused.

Several Toronto synagogues have incorporated green design into their earlier renovation projects, especially the city’s oldest congregation, Holy Blossom Temple. The atrium boasts a living wall as a focal point.

As well, Holy Blossom has motion sensors in the lights in the office spaces, plus special light switches have been installed that give users more control over when they turn on and off, said Rabbi Yael Splansky.

Montreal’s main Jewish federation building, known as the Cummings House, underwent a green upgrade about 12 years ago, and received a BOMA certification, according to Glenn Nashen, director of media relations for Federation CJA. At the time, he said they installed LED lights, stopped using paper plates during meetings, and engaged the wider Jewish community in a series of Town Halls.

“While the pandemic may have shifted priorities over the last few years we will surely return to these important initiatives,” Nashen said, in an email.

Edmonton’s Temple Beth Ora dug a rain garden last summer at the site of the city’s Talmud Torah school, as part of its efforts to be more conscious of sustainability. This comes on top of the Reform congregation’s existing kosher food policy, adopted in 2019, that frowns upon single-use plastics but also requires ethical choices when any food is brought into the premises.

Weather permitting, Beth Ora’s rabbi, Gila Caine, holds services outside in “what I like calling the ‘outdoor shul’,” she said. This encourages members to remember the outdoor world is also sacred.

It’s a sentiment that Vancouver’s rabbi, Shlomo Schachter shares, even though he comes at it from the modern Orthodox perspective.

However, he feels that the sense of urgency to do something about climate change may be more top of mind for people in B.C., a province that has endured forest fires, damaging floods, and deadly heat domes in the past two years.

“Yeah, it just makes it very real. You see climate change happening here. You see little things, like, when we had the problem with the roads and the flooding, the supermarket didn’t have yogurt for a week,” Schachter recalled.

Ariel Greene, the head of the sustainability committee, agrees.

“I’m hesitant to say that it was a good thing. But anything that can help promote awareness has some type of positive aspect.”

Despite the tangible evidence of climate change in the Vancouver area, Schara Tzedeck is the only Orthodox congregation taking part in the Hazon Seal of Sustainability program. The ultra-Orthodox Chabad schools and synagogues are not involved, according to a spokesperson for Vancouver’s Jewish Federation.

Rabbi Schachter chalks it up to a reluctance on the part of Orthodox Jews to deviate from long-standing practices, in the face of a changing world.

“I think there’s a sense in many Orthodox communities that Judaism is hard enough without having new problems. And the sense that God gave us the Torah, and if we didn’t have these laws about not using paper plates before, so they must not be that important, right?” he explained, calling it an unfortunate, unnecessary response.

He argues that saving the planet is actually embedded in the Torah, so paying attention to the environment could help Orthodox Jews gain new understanding of the scriptures, in a custom known as expanding the Torah, which is considered a blessing.

“My sense is one day it will be clear that there’s a halakhic prohibition to pollute and to do things that are detrimental to the entire earth. We haven’t yet evolved those opinions and they haven’t become articulated, but I think they will.”

For Ariel Greene, the biggest challenge he’s faced towards steering the 500-member Schara Tzedeck congregation towards achieving Hazon’s Seal of Sustainability has been convincing people to come out on a cool February Friday night for a vegan Tu b’Shevat meal.

It was hard work, he said. And as often happens with Jewish functions, too many people waited until the very last minute to reserve tickets, and he had to turn them away in order to comply with the caterer’s deadline.

But otherwise, the pareve cholent is catching on at Sabbath kiddush, Rabbi Schachter said, as is the switch from disposable dishes to reusable ones that need to be washed.

“Well, our kiddush is very well liked. We have the best veggie cholent this side of the Mississippi. That’s what they say,” Schachter quipped. n

Ellin Bessner is chief correspondent of The CJN Daily

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