Winter 2024 | Hanukkah 5784 Am Yisrael Chai! The Canadian Jewish News
The miracle of Hanukkah will be reflected in our hearts and the candles we light We have come to banish the darkness Sending light and hope from Jerusalem A LIGHT OF HOPE In the midst of terrible darkness Jerusalem will always shine
What’s inside
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THE FRONT PAGES 12
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Avi Finegold on the significance of Hanukkah during wartime 20 Q&A: Geddy Lee talks about the making of his memoir YONI GOLDSTEIN 28 Looking back at the year in sports with Menschwarmers
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FEATURES 36
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Rabbi Elyse Goldstein reflects on a 40-year career
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The mirror has two faces in Naomi Klein’s Doppleganger PHOEBE MALTZ BOVY
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Rebecca Rosenblum on finding connection in isolation
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THE BACK PAGES 55
A taste of the new season of sufganiyot 60 Adeena Sussman sets a fresh table for Shabbat LILA SARICK 66 The history of Canada Post’s Hanukkah stamp
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Contributors
Avishag Shaar-Yashuv (p.12) is an Israeli photojournalist and documentary photographer diligently covering the war in Israel since it began. She has travelled the Gaza envelope to observe brutalized kibbutzim and military assembly areas, and documented dozens of Oct. 7 massacre survivors recounting their horrific experiences.
Avi Finegold (p12) is the founder of the Jewish Living Lab, who previously served as the interim rabbi at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue and as executive director of the Montreal Board of Rabbis. Currently, he slings hotter-than- horseradish takes on The CJN podcast Bonjour Chai .
66 An IDF soldier surveys the carnage following the Oct. 7 massacre in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Thursday Nov 2, 2023.
Kailee Mandel (p.55) is a Toronto-based commercial photographer and creative director who specializes in products and lifestyle. Her consumable collaborations have spanned all sorts of food and drink—leading up to the sweetest of all cover story assignments.
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The Canadian Jewish News
Yoni Goldstein CEO and Editor-in-Chief Marc Weisblott
Managing Editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy Senior Editor Ronit Novak Art Director Etery Podolsky Designer Sarah Zahavi Design Associate Lila Sarick News Editor Michael Fraiman Podcast Director Grace Zweig Sales Director Kathy Meitz General Manager
D ear Y oni , with deep appreciation of your outstanding and innovative vision, service, and leadership to Canadian Jewish life, we wish you the best in all your future endeavours!
Board of Directors : Bryan Borzykowski President Sam Reitman Treasurer and Secretary Ira Gluskin
Jacob Smolack Elizabeth Wolfe
For all inquiries info @ thecjn.ca
Cover: Photograph by Kailee Mandel Food styling by Michelle Rabin
Printed in Winnipeg by Kromar Printing Ltd.
With the participation of the Government of Canada.
Turning a page after a decade…
T en years ago this month, I was a 33-year-old walking into The Canadian Jewish News office to start my new job as editor-in-chief. I know it was a Tuesday, because back then Mon- day was newspaper production day, which involved a mad scramble to get the pages off to the printer. Nobody would’ve noticed my entrance—much less had a second to direct me to the corner office. But I remember what I was wearing, and the song I blasted on the drive to the border of Toronto and Thornhill to pump myself up, because I was so nervous. A decade later, The CJN’s operations are largely virtual, and I’m closing those tabs while reminis- cing about everything that happened in between. The ups and the downs—and the times when things went completely sideways, like when the newspaper closed in April 2020. Eight months later, a 60-year-old media outlet many figured was gone for good miraculously returned. I’m happy to report that the good times out- weighed the bad. The job gave me more than I could’ve ever hoped for. But before I move on to a different role, let me get a few things on the record. The first is to wish my colleagues much success going forward. News media is a tough haul at the best of times. And these aren’t those times. And yet, The CJN was reinvented with a model that demonstrates how journalism can work, by being nimble enough for constant iteration and innova- tion, thanks to enthusiastic community support. What it really boils down to is knowing your audience. But it’s not like this one is a monolith, either. There are around 400,000 Jews in Canada, spread out over a vast geographical space, with too many denominations, sub-denominations and non-denominations to count. Still, we want each and every one of them to see themselves somehow reflected in this project. Probably not at the same time, or tuned in to the same frequency, but often enough to feel connected to something bigger. And feel comforted that they’re being seen as uniquely as they are. When I started this job, tens of thousands of readers would show their support with a weekly newspaper subscription, and that was enough of a relationship for most. Now, the relationship is something our audience needs to have reinforced each day. The CJN is sustainable thanks to you feeling some ownership in this project.
The validation came in the form of the many hundreds who have so far considered this a cause worth a tax-deductible contribution of at least $100 a year. (You can find the latest names on page 30 of this issue—then add yours if you haven’t yet.) Along with our daily news and podcasts, the support is allowing the magazine you’re holding to evolve in wonderful ways that will go even further in 2024, with confidence that continues to grow. When I was young I never thought I’d end up a journalist. I sort of fell into it by accident. I certainly never dreamed of making fundraising pitches for the publication my parents and grandparents read at the kitchen table. But it ended up coming naturally to me. The motivation came from watching how the initial promise of social media devolved into a competition between loudmouths and idealogues, who drowned out so many traditional sources of information. And when the news is so easily ma- nipulated, we need outlets we can trust, as a pillar on which a community rests. While others tried to fill the short-lived gap, it be- came increasingly clear to me during that fraught pandemic year: Jews in Canada needed The CJN. The people who stood by me felt the same way. You can be sure that they are as dedicated as I have been. The office I first entered was vacated early in the lockdown. And the only thing I saved from the wall was a January 2015 front page printed days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, with just three stark words: “Je Suis Juif.” It’s a reminder that when tragedy befalls our people, we rally together, we understand each other on a deeper level—and few words are neces- sary in the end. Similar sentiments were in the air when we were putting this issue together in the weeks leading up to Hanukkah. Thankfully, the media outlet I led for a decade has many things to celebrate, and the future should only bring more. The Canadian Jewish News will be here for you through thick and thin to provide a crucial connection, with doses of whimsy along the way. It’s been an honour to do this job. And now I’m honoured to join the rest of you in looking forward to what The CJN does next. — Yoni Goldstein
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Congratulations Yoni on 10 great years as editor-in-chief of The Canadian Jewish News and for successfully relaunching the CJN platform over the past three years.
Best of luck on your next adventure.
With thanks, from the CJN Board of Directors
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crrf-fcrr.ca
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ESSAY
The War Within
PHOTOGRAPHY BY AVISHAG SHAAR-YASHUV
Israeli soldiers work in an artillery unit near the Gaza border on Thursday, November 2, 2023.
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H anukkah . The temple defiled, the one jar of oil, enough to last one day, mir- aculously lasting eight days. We recreate this every year to celebrate the miracle and the victory over dark forces that it represented. Let me let you in on a little secret. I know religious scholars and even rabbis who don’t really believe it. Neither, it seems, did many people who were around at the time or soon after: the documents that describe what happened during the rebellion in 164 BCE don’t seem to discuss a miracle at all. Maccabees I and Maccabees II are contemporary accounts of the events and they don’t mention it. Neither does Joseph- us, who wrote famous accounts of Jewish history in the first century. In one of them, Antiquities of the Jews , he mentions that the festival was called “Lights,” but assumes that it was because “this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us, and that thence was the name given to that festival.” It is only in the Talmud, written hundreds of years later, that we see the story that we now know as central to our celebration first appear. If we set aside the miracle of the light and turn our attention to other parts of the story, what we find is a struggle over assimila- tion, a surprise military victory—itself likely
Hanukkah is about many things— self-determination and freedom, but also Jews fighting other Jews. The parallels to today are alarming.
By Avi Finegold
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telling us that you can have sex with captive women.) In the early days of this war I heard Rabbi Berel Wein, a scholar with many his- torical works published in the haredi world, claim that Hamas and Palestinians—yes, all of them—were the Amalekites, and that just as the Torah tells us that the latter must be eradicated in toto, including the women and children, so too must we eradicate the former. You may, at this point, be protesting: that that’s not what is meant, the Rabbis dealt with all this in the Talmud and after. All of that may be true, but clearly there are Jews
increasingly narrow. You are either on the side that says, there is no such thing as proportionality: the Holocaust is happening again and Israel has to answer to no one but itself. Or you stand for peace at any and all costs—even at the expense of Jew- ish safety and the viability of a homeland in Israel. This polarization is a central problem and not just incidental to what is happening in the world. One of the things that seems to be entering into communal discourse with the current Gaza war is the policing of who gets to
near-miraculous—and a whole lot of open questions. What does it mean to celebrate our military might? Why did it take over 2,000 years for another decisive Jewish vic- tory? What other holidays might be masquer- ading as military victories? If those questions feel eerily pertinent, it’s because many people are asking them—not only about a long-ago war but about the one that’s being waged in Israel right now. Among the long list of the Things You Get Asked as a Rabbi, especially when Israel is embroiled in some sort of conflict: What is the Jewish view of war? Are there Jewish ethics about the conduct of war? What is the IDF allowed to do halachically? What are our obligations towards hostages? Towards enemies? Towards non-combatants? I don’t claim to be an expert in this field and usually direct anyone who asks me about it to some articles on the topic—there have been no shortage of them written in the interim since the start of the war with Gaza. But when I do, I also point out that anyone interested can find backing, in the Torah and rabbinic literature, for a great many differ- ent—and sometimes conflicting—perspec- tives on these questions. Do you want to support an intervention that is peaceful and minimally harmful? You’ll find plenty of sources that remind us that no single life is more important than another, that we must provide for captives and ensure that we do violence only when we absolutely must. The Talmud discusses the great lengths a king needed to go to in order to engage in a war that wasn’t de- fensive—the definition and limits of which themselves come in for further careful analysis. The Rabbis then detail how far one must go to avoid unnecessary destruc- tion, pointing to the biblical passage that forbids tearing down fruit-bearing trees during a siege. People love to point out that the IDF even enshrined this in their training, including it in their doctrine of to- har haneshek , or purity of arms, instructing soldiers on how and when they are allowed to engage an enemy. Conversely: Do you want carnage and destruction to rain down on Gaza? You’ll be glad to see that the Bible is full of bloody battles to capture the land of Israel and that the early Israelites were instructed to destroy entire tribes like Amalek. And let’s not forget that there’s an entire passage in the Torah that discusses women captured in battle, outlining the steps one must follow to be able to sleep with them. (In case this isn’t sufficiently clear: the Torah seems to be
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot on Sunday, October 29, 2023.
and Jewish leaders who believe it to this day—leaders like Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, a Chabad rabbi known for his radical views on Israeli-Arab relations, who praised Baruch Goldstein for the Hebron Massacre, and counts Bezalel Smotrich and other right-wing Knesset members as followers. The Torah can be used to prop up a very wide spectrum of opinions, and yet the ac- ceptable spectrum of opinion has become
participate in it and who is deemed beyond the pale. This policing may have existed in the past more subtly, but has become much more aggressive lately. This is true across the spectrum of Jews and Jewish thinking. Our feeds are filled with people saying they will block you if you don’t have any compas- sion for dead Palestinians, or for living ones who have to endure so much hardship. We see others being declared persona non grata
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as well: centuries after their rebellion, the temple that they had rededicated was ultimately destroyed by the Romans. The Rabbis tell us that it was because of sinat chinam —baseless hatred of Jews towards other Jews. Even on purely historical grounds, they’re not wrong: it was quite possibly a lot of infighting between the various sects that prevented the Jews from mounting any credible defence against the Romans. Sinat chinam is something we can combat today simply by trying to understand each other better. You may still disagree with the gun-toter, but you might see that they have many fears, and that those fears humanize them. You might think that a gun isn’t a security blanket, but for them it is. And it might help you not hate them. You may think that every Palestinian agrees with Hamas, but speak to a Jew who regularly socializes or does business with Palestinians and you might see why they have sympathy for them. I have full faith in the IDF and their ability to unite Israelis together in battle. But I do not see that unity in our community more broadly. It can’t possibly be to our benefit to have bitter internal strife over who is more authentically Jewish, the right or the left. There are so few times we should exclude people from the community that we should never even think of it. To quote the Holy Bard of Montreal, Leonard Cohen: Anyone who says I’m not a Jew Is not a Jew I’m very sorry But this is final I have no idea what might happen in Israel or Gaza, either over the short or the long term. A decisive military victory or loss might have unintended consequences that I will not try and guess at. But I do know that perhaps we should not be celebrating military victories the way we used to. In an article on thetorah.com written long before the current war, Malka Simkovich, a scholar of early Jewish history, points out that “the rabbis effectively rebranded the holiday so that instead of glorifying Hasmonean mil- itary prowess, the holiday instead glorifies the unconditional and miraculous divine light that Jews can depend on, even in the gloomiest of darkness.” Let’s take a minute to remind ourselves of this, and maybe bring a little more light into this gloomy time. n
some fairly radical tactics in their path to victory. Forcible circumcision of Jews who wanted to assimilate was not unheard of. Neither was killing Jews who did assimi- late. These practices started to fade away in Talmudic times, making way for a more heterogeneous, inclusive understanding of the Jewish faith. Famously, the redactors of the Talmud included many diverging and sometimes contradictory legal opinions on the ques- tions they discussed. This became a hallmark of Talmudic writing: not just a final verdict but the whole often messy discourse that preceded it was deemed important. The losing opinions were and are still seen to have value because the process matters as much as the outcome—and the holders of losing opinions were wise and arrived at their views through careful reasoning, just as the victors in legal debates did. Even proponents of what seem to be heresies and radical assimilation are included in Jewish tradition, with rabbis looking for ways to keep them in the fold. And yet, today we find ourselves excluding and excluding and excluding. This will do lasting damage to our commun- ity and to our individual psyches. We are no longer asking ourselves why an individual has an opinion. We are no longer assuming the best in others. The Maccabees did this. But the Mac- cabees also did something novel during the rebellion, something that saved many lives. Jews were dying in attack after attack because the Seleucids had figured out that they wouldn’t fight back on the Sabbath. So the Maccabees ruled that preserving life was paramount—that it trumped the usual rules—and began fighting every day, includ- ing on the Sabbath. This is the source of our present-day discussions about pikuach nefesh : it’s why we are commanded to break almost every rule that usually binds us in order to save a life. This can be a powerful lesson for us, not just about the sanctity of life that Judaism espouses, but about our capacity to hold space for opinions that aren’t ours. While the Maccabees were ostensibly on the side of tradition, this approach to preserving life was by no means standard at the time. Maybe we too need to start by not disparaging ideas and opinions that we think are wrong. At the very least it may help us to understand where others are coming from and why they believe what they do. The Maccabean victory sowed the seeds for something much bigger and unintended
The Torah can be used to prop up a very wide spectrum of opinions, and yet the acceptable spectrum of opinion has become increasingly narrow.
if they don’t believe that Palestinians are all members of Hamas who all want every Jew dead, not just from the river to the sea but across the globe. Then there are the endless arguments over which organization made which statement, what it did or did not include, and why. This is not helping. At all. We have come a long way from the Maccabean approach. We often forget, or were never taught, that they employed
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Hon. Omar Alghabra
Hon. Anita Anand Oakville Anita.Anand@parl.gc.ca
Rachel Bendayan Outremont Rachel.Bendayan@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Carolyn Bennett Toronto—St. Paul’s Carolyn.Bennett@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Bardish Chagger Waterloo Bardish.Chagger@parl.gc.ca
Shaun Chen Scarborough North Shaun.Chen@parl.gc.ca
Mississauga Centre Omar.Alghabra@parl.gc.ca
Paul Chiang Markham—Unionville Paul.Chiang@parl.gc.ca
Michael Coteau Don Valley East Michael.Coteau@parl.gc.ca
Julie Dabrusin
Anna Gainey Notre-Dame-de- Grâce—Westmount Anna.Gainey@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Karina Gould Burlington Karina.Gould@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Steven Guilbeault
Toronto—Danforth Julie.Dabrusin@parl.gc.ca
Laurier—Sainte-Marie Steven.Guilbeault@parl.gc.ca
Anthony Housefather Mount Royal / Mont-Royal Anthony.Housefather@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Helena Jaczek Markham—Stouffville Helena.Jaczek@parl.gc.ca
Majid Jowhari Richmond Hill Majid.Jowhari@parl.gc.ca
Hon. David McGuinty Ottawa South David.McGuinty@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Marco Mendicino
Yasir Naqvi Ottawa Centre Yasir.Naqvi@parl.gc.ca
Eglinton—Lawrence Marco.Mendicino@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Mary Ng Markham—Thornhill Mary.Ng@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Rob Oliphant Don Valley West Rob.Oliphant@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Ya’ara Saks York Centre Yaara.Saks@parl.gc.ca
Hon. Judy Sgro Humber River— Black Creek Judy.Sgro@parl.gc.ca
Francesco Sorbara
Sameer Zuberi
Vaughan—Woodbridge Francesco.Sorbara@parl.gc.ca
Pierrefonds—Dollard Sameer.Zuberi@parl.gc.ca
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From Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario & the Ontario PC Caucus
Laura Smith MPP/Députée - Thornhill
Michael Kerzner MPP/Député - York Centre
Robin Martin MPP/Députée - Eglinton-Lawrence
Stan Cho MPP/Député - Willowdale
Stephen Lecce MPP/Député - King-Vaughan
Michael Parsa MPP/Député - Aurora- Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill
Daisy Wai MPP/Députée - Richmond Hill
Andrea Khanjin MPP/Députée - Barrie-Innisfil
Logan Kanapathi MPP/Député - Markham-Thornhill
‘I was never a person who wanted to look backwards’ Geddy Lee talks to Yoni Goldstein about his Jewish roots, the early days of Rush, and what drove him to write his memoir My Effin’ Life . I t took a prolonged pandemic lockdown for Geddy Lee to commit to taking stock of lot of spare gardens. It wasn’t exactly a lush environment. We first lived around Bathurst and Wilson, but then we moved to the outskirts of the city: even newer buildings, even fewer
his personal history: My Effin’ Life , co-written with Daniel Richler, is about how growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust segued into worldwide success as the bass-playing frontman for a rock trio called Rush. L et’s start by talking about where it began 70 years ago for Gary Lee Wein- reb in the suburbs of Toronto, before you adopted your mother’s pronunciation of your first name to become Geddy Lee. The immigrant population seemed to be interested in new builds. They wanted to be in an area that was not reminiscent of where they’d come from in any way. When they arrived, they lived in and worked in the downtown core. And they worked in factories, a lot of them in the shmatte business, doing piecework and trying to scrape together a living. The sooner they could get away from it, up north, where there was more space, it was less remin- iscent of the world they’d left behind and all the damage of the old world that had occurred through the war. The result was a neighbourhood with very young trees and a
trees—a typical suburban barren landscape. But I found the suburbs a soulless environ- ment. I couldn’t wait to get to where people lived closer together. You describe yourself as a nerdy kid, trying to hide your Jewishness—and in many cases being the only Jewish person in groups, especially as you’re getting into playing bass guitar. We’re talking about two different periods here. Before my father passed away, when I was 12, I was a dutiful Jewish kid like any other Jewish kid. I was very quiet and most of my peer group were the friends that I had either at school or in my neighborhood, which were mostly Jewish. But after our year of mourning, we moved to Bathurst and Steeles. We were the Jewish kids that were bused into R.J. Lang Elemen- tary School (near Yonge and Finch). And that’s where I started to experience flagrant antisemitism.
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Geddy at SARSStock in Toronto, 2003
A young Gary Weinrib showing an early interest in music
Geddy and his sister Susan with their father Morris Weinrib
even if I was still not a believer in God. It also brought me closer to my mom who had not really been supportive of me quitting school and running away to join the circus. She wasn’t too keen about that, but I started to understand why she wanted me to go down certain paths in life. And I also understood that with my father no longer around as an enforcer, that was very unlikely to happen. And so, I married out of the faith, as did my brother and my sister—although my sister’s second marriage was to someone Jewish. We’ve all come back to Judaism very strongly. We celebrate all the holidays. I just felt that what my parents went through, the culture they grew up in, created the culture I grew up in. And if you want to understand me, you’ve got to understand that. Scholars talk now about this idea of second- and third-generation survivors, and how that legacy affects them. I’m assuming you feel, it sounds like you’re describing, like you feel like you’re a survivor, too. There’s a lot smarter writing about this than mine, but I do think that there’s a trauma that’s passed on and a guilt that’s passed on. Now, not everybody feels those things in the same way. When I first met Ben Mink, a brilliant musician also from that part of Toron- to, we realized that we had so many similar experiences being children of survivors, I can’t even explain how comforting it was to both of us. It brought out this very dark sense of humour about it all. We made so many bad Holocaust jokes between us because we could, because we were the ones who understood how horrific it was. It bonded us as friends, and we both found a way out of the
There were still a lot of farms on the edge of the city; these were the last people to sell their property for construction that seemed forever moving north. Kids would come on their bikes, and they taunted and terrorized us. We grew accustomed to not advertising our religion. I started getting into music, and meeting other kids that were into music—but few of those kids were Jewish. And eventually I got into different friend groups, to whom I would be introduced: “This is Geddy, he’s Jewish, but he’s OK.” Which I found incred- ibly offensive, but I didn’t say anything. I was quiet. You don’t want to advertise that you’re different, but you get treated as if you’re different. That’s a motivating factor when you’re a young musician to join a band. Part of that you’re motivated by is acceptance. I was a quick learner. Regardless of any aliena- tion I might have felt through these various friends. It was the music that sustained me. It was the music that fed me and the feeling that I can do this. Your book also gets into explaining how you started to reassess your cultural roots... When I joined Rush and started playing bars and playing clubs—and then eventually getting signed to a deal—it was a whole different thing. I was becoming a profession- al musician in my mid-teens. Things were changing really quickly. And it really wasn’t about what religion I was. It was about, you know, music. Everything was music. Every- thing was the band, you know, writing songs and playing as many gigs as we could. Trying to get gigs. And by the time we’d gone on
tour for the first time in 1974, the music was opening a whole new world for me. I used to wear a mezuzah around my neck on stage. Rush was the opening act for Kiss and we were down south, maybe Alabama. Gene Simmons came up to me and he picked up my mezuzah and he said, “I don’t think it’s a wise idea to wear that thing when you’re playing in places like this. They don’t think too kindly of our kind.” He scared me a little bit. I put the mezuzah away. The third chapter is all about your Holo- caust survivor parents’ history before they came to Canada and especially detailed when it comes to your mother, Mary Weinrib. I couldn’t imagine explaining who I am and why I am the way I am without informing people about how I grew up. The shadow of the Holocaust was on me the entire time. Their stories gave me nightmares. And that helped form my worldview. As I got older and was able to put these things in a better per- spective, it still informed my personality. And once I started becoming more successful, I returned to acceptance of my Jewish roots,
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of way of going about things. Like you’re asking yourself a question, you’re doing your best to answer it, but you’re never satisfied with the answer. I’m obsessed with making the perfect record, but it’s impossible to do that. But you still have to try. And with everything I do, I put my all into it. I want it to be, I want everything to be perfect. Even if it’s a stupid comedy film being shown on the rear screen of a concert, I want it to be as funny as it can be. When you’re making records, that’s all that matters is trying to get it as perfect as possible. But there’s an old saying that good is the enemy of perfect. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that, but I didn’t adhere to that philosophy. I chose to look for perfection. Every time we I got into different friend groups, to whom I would be introduced: “This is Geddy, he’s Jewish, but he’s OK.” Which I found incredibly offensive, but I didn’t say anything.
rebirth and becoming a zayde. How do you find the balance between honouring the past and living in the present? I never was a person who wanted to look backwards. And now I’ve done exactly that by writing a memoir—against everything I’d worked towards. I spent most of my life run- ning towards a musical ideal, running to live, trying to live as large as I could live because I think many things go into that decision. I felt the clock ticking. I lost my father when he was only 45. I always knew, because of the stories of the Holocaust I grew up with, how quickly time goes and what a short leash we all have on this planet. I wanted to make the most of it. So, it took a pandemic to get me to write this book. It took lockdowns—lockdown after lockdown—to get me into that mode. And some pretty powerful losses, too. The death of Neil Peart in January 2020 affected Alex Lifeson and me profoundly. I’m sure his family felt it in a much more deep and profound way. But we spent 45 years together, and the last few were exceedingly painful and difficult. We tried to be there for him as best we could. But being locked down with that grief a couple months later forces one to be reflective. At the same time, my mother was suffering from dementia. I was witnessing her slowly lose her grey cells and be un- aware of where she was and have memory conflicts. And I thought, OK, so will that happen to me? Am I now poised? I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs. maybe the best thing I can do for myself is to finally look back, examine my life, examine the other losses I’ve experienced and try to make some sense of this new loss, you know? Because when you lose someone, it’s like everyone you’ve lost happens all over again. You know, they’re all connected in some way. That’s the reason I dedicated a couple of years to the memoir. Parts of it were rollicking and fun and great to remember, and other parts were painful and delicate and had to be treated in a very thoughtful manner when I was writing. Now I’m in the portion where I’m promoting the book. It’s healthy to understand where you came from in order for you to move forward. But you can also start getting this bloated sense of your own importance if you spend too much time admiring your own accom- plishments. Once I finish this book tour, I’m ready to move on. Whether it’s another book, or whether it’s a musical project—which I certainly hope it will be—I’m ready for that. The memoir has helped me, it’s been cathartic for me. But now, enough is enough. n
Jewish ghetto we were living in. I’m really thankful that my mother spoke of all these things. She was so open with us and scared the shit out of us by telling us horrific stories like they were nothing. But why did she do that? She did that because that was the way she spent her childhood. She was 12 years old when she went into the camps, and a woman when she came out of them. Five years in that kind of horror. What else are you gonna tell your kids who ask: What did you do when you were a teenager, mom? “Oh, I almost starved in Auschwitz and then in Bergen-Belsen.” At the same time, we were not indoctrin- ated into the faith in the same way as other Jewish kids. We were breaking away, all three of us in our own way. My brother was sent to parochial school, after the failure that my mother felt with me and my sister. He rebelled anyway. It was impossible to contain us and our spirit. All of us siblings have that in common, we wanted a more creative and a more assimilated life. At the same time, we do have a healthy reverence for what they went through. And it brought us to be very dedicated children of my mom. She was the head of the family. We revered her, and we listened to her as much as we could. But there were lines we wouldn’t cross, and those related to the dogma of the faith. You write about your need for control, whether in the studio or being able to say to your wife, it’s time for me, it’s time for me to hit the road again. Going over masters and recordings, all those things. Do you see any link between this and your upbringing? I don’t know if you can say that’s an effect of a Jewish upbringing or if it’s just a person- ality flaw. It’s an insecurity when someone feels insecure, which I certainly did as a teen. I was a shy, insecure person. I felt I was goofy looking. That’s why I grew this hair that kind of covered my face. You tend to overcompen- sate as you grow older. And as you get more confident in your skillset, you utilize it, and you want control because you want to be heard. So I went from a kid that was never really heard to someone that finally found his voice. There’s a sense that you’re always searching for something. You get off a tour, you record an album. You hear flaws, you struggle to correct them, and then you get back on the road and you come back and record again, you’re trying to compen- sate for the things that didn’t go exactly right last time. It’s a Talmudic scholar kind
made a record, and I reviewed it, I would see what had bugged me about it. I would take that with me to the next project and try to correct it. But you’re always going to make a mistake. Sometimes the mistakes you make translate better for an outsider, for an object- ive listener. Maybe what you view as a flaw is a just bit of humanity on the tracks. In the last part of My Effin’ Life , you’re talking about people getting older, and friends and colleagues getting sick and passing away—including your mother, in July 2021. But you’re also talking about
THECJN.CA 23
Happy Hanukkah! Mayor Steven Del Duca and Members of Council extend their best wishes for peace, joy, hope and happiness during this holiday season.
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Spencer Horowitz at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Team Nicaragua vs. Team Israel
Was this the best year ever for Jewish sports in Canada?
By Michael Fraiman
F or the hosts of The CJN’s sports podcast, sitting down with Michael Landsberg for a live taping was incredible—it was a chance to meet and interview some- one James Hirsh and Gabe Pulver grew up watching every day on TV. (For me, as their producer, who doesn’t care much about sports, it was cool to meet the son of my childhood orthodontist, who was probably the nicest Jewish medical professional I visited while growing up in midtown Toronto.) But for Landsberg, our Menschwarmers live show at the Prosserman JCC’s Leah Posluns Theatre was just one of many events he does in any given month on the topic of mental health. After a three-decade television career with TSN that ended in 2015, Landsberg co-created Sick Not Weak, an organization that advocates for mental health awareness,
to close out 5783, which was an exciting year for Jews in sports—particularly in Can- ada. From the NHL to MLB to PGA to even tabletop games, Canadian Jews made a huge mark in global competitions. As is our mandate on the podcast, we feel compelled to share and celebrate these Jewish sports stories, since Lord knows no one else is going to. Read on for some of our favourites from the past year. From sparkplug to slugger Months before Spencer Horwitz hit his first homer for the Blue Jays and emerged among a crop of exciting rookies, the 25-year-old first baseman and outfielder shattered expectations for Team Israel, tying a decisive game at the World Baseball Classic in the eighth inning—leading to an upset victory
trying to connect with people struggling with mental health problems and companies wanting to do more in that space. As he told our audience, regardless of whether being Jewish gave him a predispos- ition to suffer from anxiety from an early age, his identity certainly influenced his public perception during his broadcast years. “I was labeled as arrogant from the first show I ever did,” he said. “Part of it was, I earned it, right? Because I was always opinionated and I would ask questions that, if someone wasn’t giving me an answer, I would be more aggressive than most. But also, I do think there was an undertone of, ‘That Jew—why does he think he knows everything?’” The first-ever Menschwarmers live event happened a few days before Rosh Hash- anah. We wanted to do something special
28
their parents and/or grandparents reading this magazine.) Semitic semantics James, Gabe and I are all big word-gamers, from the New York Times ’ digital Spelling Bee and Wordle to the biggest of them all, Scrabble. And if there’s a cash prize for an international competition of skill, and esports are now a thing, why shouldn’t we celebrate our Canadian Scrabble champions? Josh Sokol is a staple at Montreal’s celebrated Scrabble club, which—in addition to having a lot of Jewish members—has produced mul- tiple champions of the NASPA tournament in Las Vegas, the biggest Scrabble event on the continent. Sokol is the latest. Of all the media interviews he did after his victory in July, I can guarantee he never had an interview like this one: it was great fun hearing three hardcore Canadian Jewish word gamers talking about the nitty-gritty of punctuation politics and Jewish jargon. n thecjn.ca/menschwarmers
for the Holy Land. Turns out that wasn’t an anomaly. Jays fans have since embraced the Jewish rookie, who swooped in after his teammates got injured in September, as someone who doesn’t shy from big mo- ments. Our interview with him before his big MLB breakout turned into one of the year’s most popular episodes—and it shed some light on his goals beyond the big leagues. “Playing in the World Baseball Classic has been a dream of mine forever,” he told us. “To be able to represent Israel, and my family, and where we come from, is just an unbelievable experience.” Cristall clear Only one Jewish hockey prospect was select- ed in this year’s NHL draft: Andrew Cristall, an 18-year-old out of Vancouver. Drafted by the Washington Capitals, Cristall headed out to training camp in mid-September, forced to navigate his way through this momentous opportunity during the High Holidays. But before any of that, he sat down with Gabe and Ellin Bessner of The CJN Daily for this special crossover episode that became one of our biggest of the summer. When the world came to North York Golf fans will remember that week over the summer when the PGA Tour announced it was merging with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf League. That groundbreaking news— shocking sports fans, analysts, athletes and sponsors—happened to coincide with a golf tournament that would normally have only attracted a modest amount of international attention: the RBC Canadian Open. The mer- ger news transformed the Open into a media circus, ground zero for instant reactions, heated debates and geopolitical analysis. And where was the event held? The Oakdale Golf & Country Club, a historically Jewish venue in North York. And the Menschwarm- ers , golf fanatics as they are, were on the ground to cover the event. It was a great opportunity to talk about the history of golf as a restricted sport, including Oakdale’s origins, while also tackling the merger of these massive leagues that stood oceans apart—including all the baggage the Saudis are carrying into the new partnership. Putting the ‘bet’ in aleph-bet
pervasive the onslaught of sports gambling has become, ever since the government lifted its ban on single-game sports betting. Anti-gambling activists, who look at the broader mental health implications, liken this trend to shoving cigarettes in the face of addicts who quit smoking. Meanwhile, most mainstream fans could easily argue that small-dollar bets are just another way of feeling more personally invested and excited about teams, players and games. But this is a Jewish sports podcast, so we had to ask: what does Jewish law say about this? We looked across the podcast network aisle to bring on Rabbi Avi Finegold, host of The CJN’s weekly current affairs podcast, Bonjour Chai , to chat about the halakhic implications of sports gambling in one of our most unique conversations of the year. Suiting up for the NHL After owner Eugene Melnyk—who was often mistakenly thought of as Jewish—died in 2022, the Ottawa Senators had to scramble to begin organizing the sale of the team. The board of directors began working quickly on negotiations that only wrapped up in Sep- tember 2023. A key figure: Sheldon Plener, a lawyer from Toronto who is the chairman of the Senators’ board and filled in as governor after Melnyk’s passing. Plener also happens to be close friends with James’s family. (Jewish lawyer geography is a tighter-knit game than the usual Jewish geography, apparently.) Plener took some time to sit down with us and explain his unusual path to becoming a highly successful sports lawyer, including how he helped nego- tiate the expansion of an NBA team into Toronto. A must-listen episode for any young professionals looking to get into sports law. (I’m taking a
Andrew Cristall
gamble here and as- suming, yes, there are young lawyers and/or
Anyone who watches any professional sport for even just five minutes can tell you how
THECJN.CA 29
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