Features
Nani Vazana, the only known composer of new songs in Ladino, performs in Canada
By IRENA KARSHENBAUM In early November, just prior to arriving in Canada from her home in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Ladino singer and songwriter, Nani Vazana, evokes images of centuries past when men prayed in the synagogues of their Spanish villages while the women had to make their way in the market. Their Spanish imperfect, a paella of the local language tossed with spoonfuls of Hebrew, evolved into a language of its own, Judeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino. It was this language — Vazana calls “matriarchal” because it was created by women — and used in their daily lives to discuss mother-daughter relationships, share recipes and domestic knowledge, secret desires and unattained loves that, with time, flourished with poetry and songs.
Today, Ladino is considered a dying language because most of its speakers are over 70 years of age. Vazana who, in her 30s, not only speaks the language, but is believed to be the only person in the world who writes new songs in the dying language, which are “reflective of millennial life,” as she explains.
It is a musical path that almost did not happen. Vazana’s father, who was either born in Vazan, Morocco or on a boat to Israel — his exact place of birth is unknown due to the turbulent early years of the modern state of Israel, forbade his daughter to speak Ladino. She only did so in secret, when her father was not around, with her maternal grandmother, “Savta Mami,” from when she was four to the age 12, when her grandmother passed away.
Born in Be’er Sheva, Israel, Vazana’s musical journey did not begin with Ladino music, but had European musical origins. Vazana explains that she always knew she wanted to become a singer and songwriter. “My mother says that I was imitating opera singers in the shower when I was two or three years old and I asked for a piano when I was three.” It was a wish Vazana did not see fulfilled until she was 10, but she never stopped asking for the instrument while starting piano lessons at age five or six and having to use the piano at her conservatory. She took up playing the trombone because, as a child, she had a high-pitched voice and wanted to expand her range, which is now over three octaves. She became principal trombone player for the Ra’anana Symphony Orchestra, then moved to study at the Jerusalem Music Academy, and then moved to Amsterdam to study at the Amsterdam Conservatory. That is where she decided to stay, explaining, “The city is at a crossroads for many international musicians and is great for collaborations.”
While in her new home, Vazana was invited to perform at the Tangier Jazz Festival in Morocco and took the opportunity to visit her grandmother’s home town of Fez. Walking through the ancient streets, she heard a song her late grandmother used to sing to her. The song, called “Kuando El Rey Nimrod,” translated as “When Nimrod Was King,” was sang in Arabic, not in Ladino, but had the same melody, which she recognized. “I had flash backs and it became very special and from this moment I understood what the path was about for me.”
For two years Vazana took Ladino lessons to relearn the language and started to research Ladino music. She admits the music is hard to relate to because Ladino singers do a lot of “ornaments” with their voices, “So I created my own version of the classical songs and I started to perform and record them, but without the ornaments.” The collection of songs became her third album and her first work of traditional Ladino music called, “Andalusian Brew.”
Vazana performed this repertoire for three years, which took her to all continents around the world, except Australia (and Antarctica).
She continues, “I started feeling it wasn’t enough to sing classical Ladino songs, so around 2018, I started writing my own songs in Ladino that are more reflective of modern life.” This work led to the making of her current album entitled, “Ke Haber,” translated as “What’s New.” She explains the title has a double meaning referring to the dying language and that it is also a common Ladino phrase, “It’s meant to preserve the language and make it current.”
In “I don’t want, mother,” with music and lyrics by Vazana, she sings, “I bring good news / A wealthy man / From the high society / Will propose to you,” with the daughter’s response she continues, “No mother, I don’t want that / For he only cares about wealth / And so emotionally detached.” In the notes to the album, Vazana describes the mother-daughter dialogue where the mother suggests a tall man, a jealous man or a rich man and the daughter rejects them all. Exasperated, the mother finally states that her daughter marry a drunk, only to have her daughter reveal that in fact she already is in love with a drunkard.
“El Gacela,” translated as “The Gazelle,” with lyrics by Shmuel Hanagid and Moses ibn Ezra and music by Vazana, touches on the homoerotic. She writes in the notes to the album, “It was hard to find secular materials. I asked a rabbi at the Etz Chaim library and he showed me these 2 homoerotic poems from the 11th century, written by 2 Jewish rabbis who are considered saints. It’s amazing that we feel that we’re very new and modern and advanced, but it seems that we raise the same questions 1000 years later. And maybe society was even more open minded back in the Middle Ages?”
Vazana plays the piano and trombone when performing and considers herself a solo artist employing different musicians in different locations. Being fluent in five languages — English, Hebrew, Dutch, Ladino and German — she explains that “everything” inspires her music and, “Every song is like a short movie that tells its own story.”
She says she cannot pick a favourite song, but specifically mentions “Sin Dingun Hijo Varon,” translated as “Without Any Sons,” which is included in “Ke Haber.” A song based on 11th century text, and one of the earliest examples in history of a song on a transgender subject, it uses sparse language to tell the story of a young girl who declares to her father that she will be a son he never had and her mother accepts her daughter as her son. Vazana explains, “We think that as millennials we invented this, but this has been around for centuries. The feeling of looking for your identity has very strong meaning for us today.”
Vazana’s unique contributions to world music have been recognized by her performing at the Kennedy Centre and, in September of 2023, her concert was recorded by the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Vazana had concerts in Vancouver, Canmore, Montreal and Toronto in November before returning to Amsterdam. In January of 2024, she plans to continue her world tour with 67 scheduled performances, at the time of this interview.
This story was originally published in Alberta Jewish News.
Features
Israel’s Arab Population Finds Itself in Dire Straits
By HENRY SREBRNIK There has been an epidemic of criminal violence and state neglect in the Arab community of Israel. At least 56 Arab citizens have died since the beginning of this year. Many blame the government for neglecting its Arab population and the police for failing to curb the violence. Arabs make up about a fifth of Israel’s population of 10 million people. But criminal killings within the community have accounted for the vast majority of Israeli homicides in recent years.
Last year, in fact, stands as the deadliest on record for Israel’s Arab community. According to a year-end report by the Center for the Advancement of Security in Arab Society (Ayalef), 252 Arab citizens were murdered in 2025, an increase of roughly 10 percent over the 230 victims recorded in 2024. The report, “Another Year of Eroding Governance and Escalating Crime and Violence in Arab Society: Trends and Data for 2025,” published in December, noted that the toll on women is particularly severe, with 23 Arab women killed, the highest number recorded to date.
Violence has expanded beyond internal criminal disputes, increasingly affecting public spaces and targeting authorities, relatives of assassination targets, and uninvolved bystanders. In mixed Arab-Jewish cities such as Acre, Jaffa, Lod, and Ramla, violence has acquired a political dimension, further eroding the fragile social fabric Israel has worked to sustain.
In the Negev, crime families operate large-scale weapons-smuggling networks, using inexpensive drones to move increasingly advanced arms, including rifles, medium machine guns, and even grenades, from across the borders in Egypt and Jordan. These weapons fuel not only local criminal feuds but also end up with terrorists in the West Bank and even Jerusalem.
Getting weapons across the border used to be dangerous and complex but is now relatively easy. Drones originally used to smuggle drugs over the borders with Egypt and Jordan have evolved into a cheap and effective tool for trafficking weapons in large quantities. The region has been turning into a major infiltration route and has intensified over the past two years, as security attention shifted toward Gaza and the West Bank.
The Negev is not merely a local challenge; it serves as a gateway for crime and terrorism across Israel, including in cities. The weapons flow into mixed Jewish-Arab cities and from there penetrate the West Bank, fueling both organized crime and terrorist activity and blurring the line between them.
The smuggling of weapons into Israel is no longer a marginal criminal phenomenon but an ongoing strategic threat that traces a clear trail: from porous borders with Egypt and Jordan, through drones and increasingly sophisticated smuggling methods, into the heart of criminal networks inside Israel, and in a growing number of cases into lethal terrorist operations. A deal that begins as a profit-driven criminal transaction often ends in a terrorist attack. Israeli police warn that a population flooded with illegal weapons will act unlawfully, the only question being against whom.
The scale of the threat is vast. According to law enforcement estimates, up to 160,000 weapons are smuggled into Israel each year, about 14,000 a month. Some sources estimate that about 100,000 illegal weapons are circulating in the Negev alone.
Israeli cities are feeling this. Acre, with a population of about 50,000, more than 15,000 of them Arab, has seen a rise in violent incidents, including gunfire directed at schools, car bombings, and nationalist attacks. In August 2025, a 16-year-old boy was shot on his way to school, triggering violent protests against the police.
Home to roughly 35,000 Arab residents and 20,000 Jewish residents, Jaffa has seen rising tensions and repeated incidents of violence between Arabs and Jews. In the most recent case, on January 1, 2026, Rabbi Netanel Abitan was attacked while walking along a street, and beaten.
In Lod, a city of roughly 75,000 residents, about half of them Arab, twelve murders were recorded in 2025, a historic high. The city has become a focal point for feuds between crime families. In June 2025, a multi-victim shooting on a central street left two young men dead and five others wounded, including a 12-year-old passerby. Yet the killing of the head of a crime family in 2024 remains unsolved to this day; witnesses present at the scene refused to testify.
The violence also spilled over to Jewish residents: Jewish bystanders were struck by gunfire, state officials were targeted, and cars were bombed near synagogues. Hundreds of Jewish families have left the city amid what the mayor has described as an “atmosphere of war.”
Phenomena that were once largely confined to the Arab sector and Arab towns are spilling into mixed cities and even into predominantly Jewish cities. When violence in mixed cities threatens to undermine overall stability, it becomes a national problem. In Lod and Jaffa, extortion of Jewish-owned businesses by Arab crime families has increased by 25 per cent, according to police data.
Ramla recorded 15 murders in 2025, underscoring the persistence of lethal violence in the city. Many victims have been caught up in cycles of revenge between clans, often beginning with disputes over “honour” and ending in gunfire. Arab residents describe the city as “cursed,” while Jewish residents speak openly about being afraid to leave their homes
Reluctance to report crimes to the authorities is a central factor exacerbating the problem. Fear of retaliation by families or criminal organizations deters victims and their relatives from coming forward, contributing to a clearance rate of less than 15 per cent of all murders. The Ayalef report notes that approximately 70 per cent of witnesses refused to cooperate with police investigations, citing doubts about the state’s ability to provide protection.
Violence in Arab society is not just an Arab sector problem; it poses a direct and serious threat to Israel’s national security. The impact is twofold: on the one hand, a rise in crime that affects the entire population; on the other, the spillover of weapons and criminal activity into terrorism, threatening both internal and regional stability. This phenomenon reached a peak in 2025, with implications that could lead to a third intifada triggered by either a nationalist or criminal incident.
The report suggests that along the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, Israel should adopt a technological and security-focused response: reinforcing border fences with sensors and cameras, conducting aerial patrols to counter drones, and expanding enforcement activity.
This should be accompanied by a reassessment of the rules of engagement along the border area, enabling effective interdiction of smuggling and legal protocols that allow for the arrest and imprisonment of offenders. The report concludes by emphasizing that rising violence in cities, compounded by weapons smuggling in the Negev, is eroding Israel’s internal stability.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
The Chapel on the CWRU Campus: A Memoir
By DAVID TOPPER In 1964, I moved to Cleveland, Ohio to attend graduate school at Case Institute of Technology. About a year later, I met a girl with whom I fell in love; she was attending Western Reserve University. At that time, they were two entirely separate schools. Nonetheless, they share a common north-south border.
Since Reserve was originally a Christian college, on that border between the two schools there is a Chapel on the Reserve (east) side, with a four-sided Tower. On the top of the Tower are three angels (north, east, & south) and a gargoyle (west); the latter therefore faces the Case side. Its mouth is a waterspout – and so, when it rains, the gargoyle spits on the Case side. The reason for this, I was told, is that the founder of Case, Leonard Case Jr., was an atheist.
In 1968, that girl, Sylvia, and I got married. In the same year the two schools united, forming what is today still Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). I assume the temporal proximity of these two events entails no causality. Nevertheless, I like the symbolism, since we also remain married (although Sylvia died almost 6 years ago).
Speaking of symbolism: it turns out that the story told to me is a myth. Actually, Mr. Case was a respected member of the Presbyterian Church. Moreover, the format of the Tower is borrowed from some churches in the United Kingdom – using the gargoyle facing west, toward the setting sun, to symbolize darkness, sin, or evil. It just so happens that Case Tech is there – a fluke. Just a fluke.
We left Cleveland in 1970, with our university degrees. Harking back to those days, only once during my six years in Cleveland, was I in that Chapel. It was the last day before we left the city – moving to Winnipeg, Canada – where I still live. However, it was not for a religious ceremony – no, not at all. Sylvia and I were in the Chapel to attend a poetry reading by the famed Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg.
My final memory of that Chapel is this. After the event, as we were walking out, I turned to Sylvia and said: “I’m quite sure that this is the first and only time in the entire long history of this solemn Chapel that those four walls heard the word ‘fuck’.” Smiling, she turned to me and said, “Amen.”
This story was first published in “Down in the Dirt Magazine,”
vol, 240, Mars and Cotton Candy Clouds.
Features
MyIQ: Supporting Lifelong Learning Through Accessible Online IQ Testing
Strong communities are built on education, curiosity, and meaningful conversation. Whether through schools, cultural institutions, or family discussions at the dinner table, intellectual growth has always played a central role in local life. Today, digital tools are expanding the ways individuals explore personal development — including the ability to assess cognitive skills online.
One such platform is MyIQ, an online service that allows users to take a structured IQ test and receive detailed results. As more people seek accessible educational resources, platforms like MyIQ are becoming part of broader conversations about learning, intelligence, and personal growth.
Why Cognitive Self-Assessment Matters in Local Communities
Education as a Community Value
Across many communities, education is viewed not simply as academic achievement, but as a lifelong commitment to learning. Parents encourage curiosity in their children. Students strive for academic excellence. Adults pursue professional growth or personal enrichment.
Cognitive assessment tools offer a structured way to reflect on skills such as:
- Logical reasoning
- Numerical understanding
- Pattern recognition
- Verbal analysis
These are foundational abilities that influence academic performance and everyday problem-solving.
Encouraging Constructive Dialogue
Online discussions about intelligence often spark meaningful reflection. When handled responsibly, IQ testing can serve as a starting point for conversations about:
- Study habits
- Educational opportunities
- Strengths and challenges
- The balance between genetics and environment
MyIQ fits into this dialogue by providing structured results and transparent explanations.
What Is MyIQ?
MyIQ is an online IQ testing platform designed to measure reasoning abilities across multiple cognitive domains. Unlike casual internet quizzes, MyIQ presents an organized testing experience followed by contextualized reporting.
A public Reddit discussion that references the platform can be viewed here: MyIQ
In this thread, users openly discuss their results and reflect on possible influences such as family background and personal development. The transparency of this conversation highlights organic engagement and reinforces the platform’s credibility.
How the MyIQ Test Is Structured
Multi-Domain Assessment
MyIQ evaluates intelligence across several structured areas:
Logical Reasoning
Assesses the ability to analyze information and draw conclusions.
Mathematical Reasoning
Measures comfort with numbers, sequences, and quantitative logic.
Pattern Recognition
Evaluates the ability to detect visual or numerical relationships.
Verbal Comprehension
Tests interpretation and understanding of written material.
This approach ensures that results are not based on a single narrow skill set but on a broader cognitive profile.
Clear and Contextualized Results
After completing the assessment, users receive:
- An overall IQ score
- Percentile ranking
- Explanation of score range
- Identification of stronger and weaker domains
For individuals unfamiliar with IQ metrics, percentile ranking offers helpful context. Instead of viewing a number in isolation, users can understand how their results compare statistically.
Such clarity supports responsible interpretation and reduces misunderstanding.
Comparing MyIQ to Informal IQ Quizzes
| Feature | MyIQ | Informal Online Quiz |
| Structured Categories | Yes | Often Random |
| Percentile Explanation | Included | Rare |
| Balanced Reporting | Yes | Minimal |
| Community Discussion | Active | Limited |
| Professional Presentation | Yes | Varies |
For readers interested in credible digital services, this structured approach stands out.
Responsible Use of IQ Testing
It is important to emphasize that IQ scores represent specific cognitive abilities measured under standardized conditions. They do not define:
- Character
- Work ethic
- Creativity
- Compassion
- Community involvement
Many successful individuals contribute meaningfully to their communities regardless of standardized test scores. MyIQ presents results as informational tools rather than labels, encouraging thoughtful reflection.
The Role of Community Feedback
Trust in digital services increasingly depends on transparent user experiences. The Reddit thread linked above demonstrates:
- Voluntary sharing of results
- Open questions about interpretation
- Constructive discussion about intelligence and background
- Honest reflection on expectations
Such dialogue aligns with community values that prioritize conversation and shared understanding.
When users openly analyze their experiences, it adds authenticity beyond promotional claims.
Who Might Benefit from MyIQ?
Students
Students preparing for academic milestones may find value in understanding their reasoning strengths.
Parents
Parents curious about cognitive development may use structured assessments as conversation starters about learning habits.
Professionals
Adults seeking self-improvement can use IQ testing as one of many personal development tools.
Lifelong Learners
Individuals who enjoy intellectual exploration may simply appreciate structured insight into how they process information.
Digital Tools and Modern Learning
Community life increasingly intersects with technology. From online education platforms to digital libraries, accessible learning resources are expanding opportunities.
MyIQ fits into this landscape by offering:
- Online accessibility
- Clear and structured format
- Immediate feedback
- Transparent reporting
This accessibility allows individuals to explore cognitive assessment privately and thoughtfully.
Intelligence: Genetics and Environment
The Reddit discussion highlights a common question: how much of intelligence is influenced by genetics versus environment?
While scientific research suggests both play roles, IQ testing should not be viewed as deterministic. Education quality, nutrition, mental stimulation, and life experiences all contribute to cognitive development.
MyIQ does not claim to define destiny. Instead, it offers a snapshot — a moment of measurement within a broader life journey.
Final Thoughts: MyIQ as a Tool for Reflection
Communities thrive when curiosity is encouraged and learning is valued. In this spirit, structured self-assessment tools can serve as part of a healthy intellectual culture.
MyIQ provides an organized, transparent, and discussion-supported approach to online IQ testing. With contextualized results and visible community dialogue, the platform demonstrates credibility and accessibility.
For readers interested in exploring their reasoning abilities — whether for academic, professional, or personal reasons — MyIQ offers a modern digital option aligned with the principles of education, reflection, and lifelong growth.
Used thoughtfully, it becomes not a label, but a conversation starter — one that supports curiosity, awareness, and continued learning within any engaged community.