Features
A replica jersey from a 1930s Jewish boys club in Winnipeg evokes fond memories for one of the members of that club
By BERNIE BELLAN In September 2020 I wrote a story about a long-ago Jewish club that went by the name “The Rollickers”. That story was prompted by my reading the minute book of the club, which had been in the hands of Rona Perlov, whose father, Eli Weinberg, was a founding member of the club. (By the way you can read that story on this website. Simply enter the name “The Rollickers” in our search engine.)
While reading that minute book certainly evinced a few laughs – those young guys spent more time debating about who should be punished for violating arcane rules about what constituted unacceptable behavior than anything else, I noted in my story that there was never any reference in the minutes to sports.
I wondered about that. While the YMHA on Albert Street didn’t open until 1936, there have been many stories written about great Jewish athletes from Winnipeg in the early part of the 20th century. Were they organized, I wondered? Did they have clubs?
My questions were partly answered a few weeks ago when I received a call from someone by the name of Murray Atnikov. It turned out that Atnikov was a former Winnipegger, now living in Vancouver, who had a story he wanted to share with me, but which he wanted to tell me in person. He would be coming to Winnipeg in August, he told me, and asked whether we could meet when he got here.
“Sure,” I told him. I was intrigued to find out what his story was.
Subsequently, Atnikov (who I learned, after talking to him on the phone when he called me again) is better known as Dr. Murray Atnikov, an anaesthesiologist who had left Winnipeg many years ago, came over to my house one beautiful summer day, complete with a folder which he didn’t open until we were well into our conversation.
When he was a teen in the 1930s, Atnikov told me, he belonged to a north end Jewish sports club known as “The Demons”. There was only one other surviving member of that club: Nathan Isaacs (née Isaacovitch), now a resident of Toronto (and a longtime subscriber to this paper, I might add.)
There was at least one other Jewish sports club of that era, Atnikov recalled, known as “The Eagles”. Members of both clubs played hockey, softball, and football, and their competition came from non-Jewish clubs in the area. When I asked Atnikov whether any of the boys curled, he said that was something older men did, but interestingly he told me that there was actually a football field located behind what was the Maple Leaf Curling Club on Machray, which was where the Demons and the Eagles played their games.
But why did Atnikov want to see me in person, I wondered? It turns out that in his folder he had some photographs, including one of him and Nathan Isaacs when they both served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but also one of the two of them wearing replica sweaters emblazoned with the letter “D” for Demons.
As Atnikov explained to me, a son of one of their late colleagues had been going through his father’s belongings after his father had passed away when he came across an original “Demons” sweater from the 1930s.
Knowing that Atnikov and Isaacs were the two surviving members of the Demons, this fellow had the replica sweaters made up and shipped to Atnikov and Isaacs. Recently the two old friends had a chance to visit with one another – thus the photo you at the beginning of this story.
So, where did Murray Atnikov end up after the war, I wondered? As he sat with me on my front step, regaling me with one fascinating story after another, he explained how he ended up in Vancouver.
In 1945 Atnikov was one of a group of three friends who had applied to enter medical school here in Winnipeg. Although the quota on Jewish students had just been lifted, thanks to a legal battle entered into by such individuals as Percy Barsky and Hyman Sokolov (which has been well documented both in this paper and numerous other sources), it was still no easy matter for Jewish students to get into medicine here.
As a result, Atnikov said, he and his two friends boarded a train for Chicago, where they intended to apply to the University of Chicago’s medical school. While all three were accepted, Atnikov explained, they were told that there were two different streams within the medical school. In one stream, once you graduated, you would be allowed to practice medicine anywhere in the U.S. Within the other stream, however, you would be allowed to practice medicine only in Illinois. (For how long you’d have to remain in Illinois I’m not sure. I also didn’t ask Atnikov whether he knew the answer.)
Not wanting to be forced to remain in Illinois, however, Atnikov said he decided to return to Winnipeg and see whether there was any chance he might still be able to get into medical school here. Upon returning home and contacting the medical school yet again though, he was disappointed to learn that his name was still not on the list of entrants to the new year of school.
Although disappointed, you can imagine Atnikov’s elation when he received a follow-up call from the same person who told him his name was not on the list of medical school entrants to say that a mistake had been made. Apparently when the three young men had gone to Chicago and had all been accepted into medical school there, one of the other two guys phoned the medical school here to say that they could remove their names from the list of applicants to school in Winnipeg because they had all been accepted in Chicago.
It turns out that, while Atnikov was not immediately accepted into medical school, he was number two on the wait list and, pending two other students dropping out of school, he would get in – which he did.
Upon graduating from medicine in 1950, however, Atnikov left Winnipeg to advance his medical education at the University of Minnesota. One of his colleagues there was Norman Shumway, he told me, who later became an early pioneer of heart transplant surgery. (According to Atnikov, Christian Barnaard, who performed the first-ever heart transplant on a human, learned his technique from Shumway when they were both colleagues at the University of Minnesota in the 1950s.)
Atnikov went on to have an illustrious career as an anesthesiologist, in New York, California, and ultimately, Vancouver, which is where he eventually retired from practicing.
Still, after all these years, with all that he has accomplished, Murray Atnikov was most interested in talking about the Demons and what great times they had together.
Those boyhood memories – and girlhood ones too: They never cease to fade and reliving some of those experiences is what keeps so many of us going.
Features
The Torah on a Lost Dog: Hashavat Aveidah in a Modern Canadian City
A neighbour’s dog wanders into your yard on a Wednesday morning in May, dragging a leash and looking confused. You have a choice. You can close the door and assume someone else will deal with it, call the city, or take a photo, knock on a few doors, and try to find out where he belongs.
For most people in Winnipeg and elsewhere in Canada, that choice plays out in a flash of moral instinct rather than reflection. The hand reaches for the phone and the walk around the block begins. The neighbour, if it goes well, is at the door before lunch. The decision feels minor, but it matters more than it looks.
In Jewish tradition, the act of returning a lost animal sits at the centre of one of the oldest practical commandments in the Torah. Deuteronomy 22, near the end of Parashat Ki Teitzei, contains a passage that has become the foundation for an entire body of Jewish ethical law: “If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep going astray, you shall not hide yourself from them; you shall surely bring them back.” The verse goes on to extend this duty beyond animals to any lost property. “So shall you do with every lost thing of your brother’s which he has lost and you have found.” Then comes the line that has occupied rabbis for two thousand years: “You may not hide yourself.”
The Hebrew name for this mitzvah is hashavat aveidah, the returning of a lost thing. It is one of the more practical commandments in a tradition full of practical commandments, and the rabbinic literature surrounding it is unusually thick.
A small commandment with big implications
The reason hashavat aveidah occupies so much rabbinic attention is that, on closer reading, it sets a high ethical bar. The Talmud, particularly the second chapter of tractate Bava Metzia known as Eilu Metziot, devotes pages to questions a modern reader would immediately recognize. How long must you wait for the owner to claim the item? How hard do you have to look for them? What if the animal needs feeding while you search? What expenses can you recover, and what counts as fair? What if the item is too inconvenient to safely return?
The rabbis answer all of these. The answers are not always intuitive. The finder is obligated to feed and shelter the animal while looking for the owner. The animal must not be put to work for the finder’s profit. The owner, when found, repays reasonable costs but is not on the hook for unreasonable ones. If the search takes too long, there are procedures for what to do next, none of which involve quietly keeping what is not yours.
Underneath the legal detail is a moral assumption that is easy to miss in a hurried reading. The Torah does not say to return the animal if it is convenient. It explicitly forbids the act of hiding yourself, of pretending you did not see, of crossing to the other side of the street. The commandment is as much about the person who finds as it is about the animal that is lost.
What this looks like in 2026
Most people who encounter a stray dog in a Winnipeg neighbourhood today are not thinking about Bava Metzia. They are thinking about whether the dog is friendly, whether they should call the City, whether they have time. The instinct to help is usually present. The question is what to do with it.
The practical infrastructure for hashavat aveidah in this country has changed considerably in the last decade. A finder in Winnipeg in 2026 has access to a regional humane society, a network of local Facebook groups, neighbourhood newsletters, and a handful of national platforms that gather sightings and missing-pet alerts across more than 180 Canadian cities. The mechanism is straightforward. A clear photo and a location pin can reach the right owner within hours when the system works, which it usually does.
The most underused of these resources, in any community, is the simple act of posting a sighting. Many people who find a stray feel they need to first catch the animal, find it food, take it home, or in some way solve the problem in full. The rabbis would actually disagree with that framing, and so does modern pet-recovery practice. The first responsibility is to make the sighting visible. The owner is almost certainly already looking. The finder’s main job is to surface what they have seen.
For people in Winnipeg looking for a place to start, a practical guide for what to do when you find a stray walks through the basic steps. Take a clear photo, note the cross-streets and time, check for a tag, and post the sighting where local owners will see it. The work is small. The effect, on the owner who has been awake for two nights and then sees a photo of their dog with a phone number underneath, is much larger than the work itself.
The ethical centre of the commandment
There is a strain of Jewish thought that reads hashavat aveidah as a kind of training in noticing. The deeper commandment goes beyond returning what is lost. It asks the finder to be the kind of person who sees what is lost in the first place, who does not cross to the other side of the street, who does not pretend not to have noticed.
That reading lines up with another Jewish ethical concept that often gets paired with this one: tza’ar ba’alei chayim, the obligation to prevent unnecessary suffering to animals. The Talmud derives this principle from several places in the Torah, including the rest commanded for animals on Shabbat. The two principles overlap in the case of a lost pet. The animal is suffering. The owner is suffering. The finder is, briefly, the only person in the position to do anything about it.
In a small way, the entire Canadian volunteer ecosystem around lost pets, from neighbourhood Facebook groups to national platforms to the dog walker who recognizes a posted photo, is an example of this ethical structure in action. People do not necessarily think of it in those terms. The framework is there anyway, doing its quiet work.
A community-scale point
Winnipeg’s Jewish community has always understood itself as a network of responsibilities to others, the kind that get described as chesed when they are visible and assumed when they are not. The work of returning a lost animal sits comfortably in that frame. It is not heroic, does not make the bulletin, and is exactly the kind of small obligation that knits a community together when nobody is paying attention.
The dog in the yard on a Wednesday morning in May, leash trailing, is one version of the question Deuteronomy asks. The answer, then and now, is the same. Do not hide yourself.
Features
Basketball: How has Israel become one of the best basketball countries in Europe in the last few years?
When Israeli Deni Avdija became the first Israeli to be drafted as the highest Israeli draftee in NBA history in 2020 – then emerged as a key NBA wing in Portland, it was not so much the breakthrough it appeared to be, but a portent of things to come. Israeli basketball development has been decades in the making, and in recent years its clubs have made Europe take notice.
This is why Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv, and the national basketball team of Israel are now the subjects of serious discussion in European basketball. It is only natural that fans and bettors reading form, depth of the roster, and momentum would look at our Euroleague predictions and then evaluate how Israeli teams would fit into the continental picture.
A rich history: The Maccabi Tel Aviv mythos
The contemporary narrative dates back to before Avdija. Maccabi Tel Aviv won its maiden European Cup in 1977, beating Mobilgirgi Varese and providing a nation under pressure with a sporting icon. Tal Brody’s declaration: “We are on the map” became not just a quote, it became a declaration of Jewish confidence, Israeli strength and a basketball dream.
Maccabi turned out to be the team of the nation since it bore Israeli identity past the borders. Maccabi has been a cultural ambassador before globalization transformed elite lists into multinational conundrums. Its yellow jerseys were the symbol of excellence, rebellion, and identification for the Israeli people at home and Jewish communities abroad.
The six European championships for the club provided a benchmark that has influenced the Winner League and Israeli basketball. Children were not just spectators of Maccabi, they dreamed of Europe as something accessible. Coaches studied in the continental competition. Sponsors and broadcasters realized that basketball had the potential to be the most exportable Israel team sport.
The modern pillars of Israeli basketball’s success
The recent ascendancy of Israel is no magic. It is the result of history, astute recruiting, youth-building and pressure-tested league culture. The nation has made its size its strength: clubs find talent at a young age and enhance the potential with foreign professionals.
Nurturing homegrown talent: The Deni Avdija effect
The most obvious example is that of Avdija. He was a high-ranking contributor in the system of Maccabi Tel Aviv, was chosen as a teenager, and was picked number 9 by Washington in the 2020 NBA Draft. His career was a reminder that an Israeli prospect could be more than a local star; he could be a lottery pick with two-way NBA potential.
Israeli NBA player Omri Casspi had already opened that door, and Avdija opened it even further for the next generation. Their achievements captivated the expectations of youthful players in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Holon, Herzliya, etc. An Israeli teenager is now able to envision a path from youth leagues to the Winner League, the EuroLeague, and ultimately – NBA minutes.
It is that dream that has been followed by investment. Israeli clubs put more emphasis on skills training, strength training, and analytics, as well as international youth tournaments. The success of the national program in the face of the best of Europe has also helped.
A global approach: The role of international and naturalized stars
The other pillar of the Israeli basketball program is the openness of Israel to global talent. The Winner League has been an important destination, not a stopover, for American guards and forwards. Most come in with NCAA or G league experience and become leaders due to the fact that the league requires scoring, speed and tactical flexibility.
It is enriched with naturalized players and Jewish players, who are able to use the Law of Return to come to Israel to play. Inspired by legendary players like Tal Brody, current imports who can bond both professionally and personally with Israelis have provided teams with uncharacteristic diversity in their rosters. The outcome has been a mixture of Israeli competitiveness, American shot making, Balkan toughness, and European spacing.
Making waves in Europe: Israel’s modern Euroleague footprint
Even in challenging seasons, Maccabi Tel Aviv has remained the flagship team. Currently, Maccabi is out of a playoff spot in the EuroLeague, but Hapoel Tel Aviv has shot up in playoff discussion. That juxtaposition speaks volumes: Israel is no longer represented by one lone, iconic club. Its profile has expanded.
Nevertheless, it is true that the reputation of Maccabi in the EuroLeague does count. Menora Mivtachim Arena in Tel Aviv is one of the most intimidating arenas for EuroLeague teams to play in: loud and emotional. Recent security and travel realities have affected the usual home-court advantage but the name of the club is still a potent brand.
It is the reason why there is an interesting betting discussion within Israeli teams. The name Maccabi still retains a historical impact, but analysts also need to quantify the present defensive performance, injuries, substitution of venues and guards, and fatigue in the schedule. The emergence of Hapoel has provided another Israeli point of reference and markets have to regard the nation as a multi-club force.
What’s next? The future of Israeli basketball on the world stage
Sustainability is the second test. The Israeli national basketball team desires more serious EuroBasket performances and a future world cup. It requires Avdija types – fit and powerful, more domestic big men, and guards capable of playing elite defense to get there.
The pipeline is an optimistic one. Israeli schools are more professional, teams are bolder with young talents, and the Winner League is a test ground where potential talents have to contend with older, tougher imports each week. Not all players will turn into an Avdija, yet additional players ought to be prepared to participate in EuroCup, EuroLeague, and even NBA games.
To the Jews in the Canadian diaspora, the impact is not only sporting, it is also emotional. Israeli basketball brings pride, drama and a common language to the continents. To the European fan, it provides tempo, creativity and unpredictability. To analysts, it provides a sign that a small nation, with memory, ambition and adaptation, can rise to become a true basketball power. Israel has ceased to be the unexpected guest on the table of Europe. It is a part of it, season after season.
Features
In recent years, we have been looking for something more than a house in Israel – we have been looking for a home
For many Jewish families in the diaspora, Israel has always been more than a destination. It is the land of tefillah, memory, family history and belonging. But in recent years, many families have begun asking a practical question too: should Israel also become a place where we have a home?
Not necessarily immediate aliyah. Sometimes it begins with a future option, something good to have just in case, or simply roots with a stronger connection to Eretz Yisroel.
But what does it mean?
A Jewish home is shaped not only by what is inside the front door, but by what surrounds it: neighbours, synagogues, schools, parks, local services, safe streets and the rhythm of Jewish life. For observant families, these are not small details. They are the things that turn a house into a place of belonging.
This is not a new idea. It is a need that has helped shape Jewish communities in Israel before. The Savyonim idea is rooted in the story of Savyon, the Israeli community established in the 1950s by South African Jews who wanted to create a green, safe and community-minded environment in Israel. It was a diaspora dream translated into life in the Jewish homeland.
That idea feels relevant again today. Many Jewish families abroad are now making plans around where they can feel connected in the years ahead.
Recent figures point in the same direction. Reports based on Israel’s Ministry of Finance data showed that foreign residents bought around 1,900 homes in Israel in 2024, about 50% more than the previous year, with Jerusalem emerging as the most popular place to buy. In January 2026, foreign residents still purchased 146 homes, broadly similar to January 2025, even as the wider housing market remained cautious.
For Lior David, International Sales & Marketing Manager at Africa Israel Residences, part of the continued interest may lie in the fact that today’s residential projects are increasingly built around the wider needs of Jewish families abroad: not only buying a property in Israel, but finding a setting that can support community, continuity and everyday Jewish life. That idea is reflected in Savyonim, the company’s residential concept, which places the surrounding environment at the heart of choosing a home.
This can be seen in Savyoney Givat Shmuel, where the surrounding environment includes synagogues, parks, educational institutions, local commerce, playgrounds and transport links, and in Savyoney Ramat Sharet in Jerusalem, located in one of the city’s established green neighbourhoods.
For families abroad, these things matter. Jerusalem and Givat Shmuel are never just another location. They are home to strong Jewish communities, established religious life and surroundings that allow a family to imagine not only buying property, but building a Jewish home in Israel.
Together, these projects reflect a broader understanding: that for many Jews in the diaspora, the decision to create a home in Israel is not only practical, but rooted in identity, continuity and community. The Savyonim story began with a Zionist community from abroad that succeeded in building a real home in Israel; today, that same vision continues in a contemporary form.