Local News
Winnipeggers recount experiences growing up in smaller communities
By MYRON LOVE “The place we call home,” observed Bruce Sarbit, “ – shtetl, town, city, country – is essential to who we are. We endow the place with personal meaning and it, in turn, provides us with a sense of identity and stability as we adapt to life’s circumstances in a rapidly changing world.”
For many Jewish Winnipeggers of an earlier era, like Sarbit, that sense of identity was first forged in smaller communities throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwestern Ontario where our parents and grandparents – my own father and his family among them – found general acceptance as farmers, merchants and professional people while they also successfully strived to retain their sense of Judaism.
On Sunday, September 28, Sarbit was one of a group of four Winnipeggers who participated as part of the Jewish heritage Centre of Western Canada’s program “Beyond The Perimeter: Jews Outside of Winnipeg”, which was held at Temple Shalom. The four, in addition to Sarbit, were: David Greenberg, Sid Robinovitch and Lil Zentner – who began their lives growing up in Selkirk (for Sarbit), Portage La Prairie, Brandon and Esterhazy (Saskatchewan) respectively. The program grew out of the research conducted by Chana Thau, on behalf of the JHCWC, into Jewish life in smaller communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
In Thau’s introduction, she noted the existence of several Jewish farm colonies that were established in the early years of the last century by German-Jewish Baron de Hirsch. At the same time, other Jewish immigrants (also all from the former Russian empire) to Canada were following the railroad and establishing themselves in the towns and cities that had grown up alongside the rail lines.
In the smaller communities, such as Shoal Lake – where I first lived (we were the only Jewish family) or Esterhazy (where Lil (Bober) Zentner’s family lived with two other Jewish families, the Jewish presence was minimal. In larger communities – such as Brandon, Portage and Selkirk – the number of Jewish families may have been between 20 and 30 at their peaks in the interwar years and into the 1950s. Brandon and Portage had their own synagogues.
The four speakers described many commonalities about Jewish life where they grew up. Their parents were storekeepers. Zentner’s parents, Max and Eva Bober, operated a general store in Esterhazy. Sid Robinovitch’s parents, Jack and Ethel Robinovitch, were proprietors of the Army and Navy Clothing store (which was a separate entity from the Army and Navy chain of stores which were headquartered in Regina, Sid pointed out) in Brandon. Sarbit proudly reports that his family’s Sarbit’s Department Store in Selkirk was, at one time, the largest independent store in western Canada. While David Greenberg’s father, the late I.H. Greenberg, was a lawyer in Portage la Prairie – and David and his brother, Barry, carried on the family legal practice in the community – his grandfather was first a journeyman lather who did plaster work on homes. The family later opened a second-hand store and subsequently constructed a grocery store – Greenberg’s Groceteria.
“The Greenberg grocery store extended credit to farmers and purchased their produce, which enabled it to thrive,” David Greenberg recalled. “I was once told by a friend years later that “Greenberg’s kept us alive” in the winter when they had virtually no money for food.
While the Greenberg, Robinovitch and Sarbit families arrived in Portage, Brandon and Selkirk respectively in the early 1900s – as part of the wave of Jewish immigration from Russia at the time –meaning the three were among the third generations in their communities, Lil Zentner’s parents, Max and Eva Bober were considerable later arrivals – having come to Canada respectively – in 1926 and 1930. They opened their general store in Esterhazy in 1936.
The Bobers, being newcomers, were more observant than Greenberg’s, Robinovitch’s, and Sarbit’s parents. Zentner was the only one of the four speakers who brought up the challenge of keeping kosher in a town far removed from shechita and kosher food. She recounted how her parents brought in kosher meat from Regina.
“We would buy chickens from local farmers,” she recounts. “We would take them to Melville (which numbered perhaps 30-40 Jewish families in the 1930s and 40s) to have them killed and then we would remove the feathers, cut off the heads and clean them at home.”
In Robinovitch’s telling, Jewish religious life in Brandon was “basic”. “We kept kosher in our home,” he remarks. “We brought in kosher meat from Winnipeg. We had a synagogue but, aside from the odd community event, it really only functioned on the High Holidays.”
David Greenberg noted that, for the first couple of decades, the Jewish community’s members davened in people’s homes. Portage’s Jewish community didn’t build a proper synagogue until 1950. Services were largely restricted to Friday evenings and the High Holidays. The merchants had to work on Saturdays. The community also made attempts to have a cheder, but with limited success.
While it would seem (from my own memories as well) that the general communities in those small towns respected the Jewish merchants in their midst – none of the four speakers mentioned any incidents of antisemitism – the Jewish families – even in the already more secular and integrated second and third generations – primarily socialized with other Jewish families.
In Portage – although the Jewish families did largely socialize with each other, the second and third generations also held leadership positions in the larger community. Greenberg noted that Jack Shindelman, Ben Kushner, and Irwin Callen all became aldermen, and Harold Narvey was re-elected chairman of the school board many times.
“My mother served as President of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE),” Greenberg noted, “and as a longtime volunteer at the Portage General Hospital Auxiliary. My father and his brother Allan became Exalted Rulers of the Elks Lodge, My Uncle Michael was leader of the Elks Band.”
In Zentner’s remembering, although she had many non-Jewish friends among the girls in her classes – her parents only got together socially with the other two Jewish families in town or Jewish families in nearby towns.
“In the summers, we would join other Jewish families at Round Lake, vacationing at Round Lake,” she recalled. “One summer, my parents sent me to a Habonim camp in the Qu’Appelle Valley where I met a lot of other Jewish kids.”
“For their social life, my family mixed almost exclusively with other members of Brandon’s Jewish community,” Robinovitch said. “There were Saturday evening poker nights and Sunday afternoon gatherings at Crystal’s Delicatessen. On Saturday afternoons, I would go to the movies and a couple of other Jewish kids in my school and I belonged to the Cubs and Boy Scouts.
“I had a few friends from school, but I always felt that I was different,” Robinovitch continued. “I was aware of being Jewish – although I had no real sense of what Jewishness was all about. I would say that the only time that I had any exposure to Jewish culture was when my parents sent me one summer to Herzl Camp in Wisconsin when I was 12 years old. It was a real eye opener being in an environment with so many other Jewish youngsters. I was exposed to a lot of Hebrew songs and, to this day, I still remember the Birkat Hamazon and V’ahavtah prayers that I learned there.”
The next year, the Robinovitch family moved to Winnipeg and young Sid quickly became immersed in Jewish life here. “In Brandon, I felt that we were defined by what we didn’t do,” he observed. “We didn’t go to school on the High Holidays. We didn’t have a Christmas tree. And we didn’t go to visit grandpa and grandma on the family farm.
“It was in Winnipeg where my identity as a Jew really began to take shape. Brandon was a nice place to live, but it could not provide the strong Jewish community values that emanate from a lager centre. A remnant of Jewish values still prevailed from the shtetl, but by my generation, they had worn thin.”
For Lil Zentner, the end of her time in Esterhazy came when she began dating a local boy. Her parents wouldn’t tolerate it when they found out. After a mighty blow-up, she challenged them to send her to Winnipeg where she could meet fellow Jews. Her older brother, Harold, was already here, going to university. Her parents agreed and they followed a year later.
For the Jewish community in Selkirk, Bruce Sarbit noted, being so close to Winnipeg, it was almost an extension of the larger city. His remarks were as much about nostalgia for Winnipeg as they were about Selkirk. “In my case,” he said, “I came into Winnipeg for everything Jewish – Hebrew lessons. Sunday Jewish history classes and YMHA clubs.”
The smaller city, he observed – at its peak home to perhaps 20 Jewish families, “fostered a strong sense of community among the Jewish families and helped them to hold onto their cultural and religious traditions, celebrate Shabbat, observe holidays, practise kashrut and maintain their Yiddish language as they ran businesses that necessitated interactions with the non-Jewish population”.
He added that his own father, Syd, who came to Portage at the age of three, was immersed in the general community as well – having twice served as president of the Chamber of Commerce, was also a member of the Rotary club, and once ran for election to the Legislature.
Unlike Portage and Brandon, though. Selkirk was close enough that the Jewish residents of Selkirk often drove into Winnipeg, attended High Holiday services here, visited relatives and, in general, partook of the activities, Jewish and otherwise, that the larger city provided.
Unlike Robinovitch and Zentner though, Sarbit did not spend all of his adult life in Winnipeg. He left Selkirk at the age of 18 for Brandon. For 40 years, the psychologist turned playwright served as a counsellor at Brandon University.
“The descendants of the first residents chose not to remain in Portage,” Greenberg concluded – in summing up the decline and disappearance of the other Jewish communities on the Prairies – with the exception of Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon. “Intermarriage was frowned upon and the children were too few in number and not close enough in age to socialize, so for girls to meet Jewish boys they were required to move to alarger centres, primarily Winnipeg. I believe culture was the motivating factor in their decision.
“Only my Uncle, Allan Greenberg, a bachelor, Harold and Mildred Narvey, and their son Bruce, who opened a chiropractic practice, remained. Bruce Narvey, as I mentioned, was the last of the resident descendants, before leaving after his mother died.”
Although Greenberg himself – and his brother, Barry – have lived most of their lives in Winnipeg, they continue to practise law in Portage and have had a history of community involvement in the Portage community. In recent years, David co-chaired the Portage and Area Beautification initiative committee through the Chamber of Commerce, resulting in seven years of service in the planning and implementation of the project. As a result, the committee was awarded its Citizenship of the Year award by the community. As for Barry Greenberg, he is a past president of the Portage & District Chamber of Commerce.
Local News
“Fiddler on the Roof”: First ever joint production between Winnipeg Jewish Theatre and Rainbow Stage is a smash hit
By BERNIE BELLAN You really can’t go wrong by mounting a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” – and Rainbow Stage has proven that four previous times: in 1971, 1977, 1984, and 1993.
What each of those productions had in common though – aside from the fact that they were solely Rainbow Stage productions, was that each time the star role of Tevye the milkman was played by Cliff Gardner who, in his day job, was the program director at CJOB radio.
I can’t remember how many times I saw Fiddler at Rainbow State previously but, after a while it wasn’t quite the novel experience it was the first time I had seen it there.
But now – as a result of a very creative idea, “Fiddler on the Roof” has been brought back to Rainbow Stage once more – but this time as a co-production with the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre.
The idea for mounting a joint production came from WJT’s artistic director, Dan Petrenko who, as Myron Love noted in an article for The Jewish Post this past February, had observed that “ Because of the times we’re living through, and particularly the growing antisemitism in our communities and across the country, I felt there is a need to tell a story that celebrates Jewish culture on the largest stage in the city – to reach as many people as possible.’ ”
Myron’s article went on to say that “Last year, WJT approached Rainbow Stage with a proposal for the co-presentation of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Rainbow Stage management was really enthusiastic in their response, Petrenko said.”
In my own profile of Dan Petrenko, which I wrote in April 2023, when he first came to Winnipeg, just after having been hired as the WJT’s new artistic director, I noted that “Dan was born in Israel, the son of Jewish parents who had moved from their hometown of Odessa in Ukraine.
“A formative influence in his life, he says, was his grandmother, who had been a pianist in Ukraine. She had aspirations early in her life to study in a music conservatory, but the antisemitism that was pervasive in the Soviet Union prevented her from achieving that ambition. Instead, she had to travel all the way to Siberia in order to obtain training to become a pianist.”
After re-reading my own article about Petrenko in preparation for writing about the new production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” now on at Rainbow Stage until Sept. 13, I couldn’t help but note the parallels in Petrenko’s own life and the story that is at the heart of “Fiddler,” which is one of Jews having to cope with antisemitism in their native Ukraine and finally being forced to leave their home community of Anitevka – for parts unknown.
While “Fiddler” has so many dimensions – from its story of persecution, of girls being kept from studying because of age old taboos, of marriages being arranged, to notions of democracy – and socialism, starting to be espoused in the late 1800s in Eastern Europe – it’s the music that really drives the show.
I don’t have to remind anyone how timeless the songs from “Fiddler” have become. There have been documentaries produced, both about how the Broadway show came about and later, how Norman Jewison crafted a quite different approach to telling the story of Tevye the milkman in his brilliant movie adaptation of the Broadway musical. There have also been several books telling the story how three geniuses: Sheldon Harnick, Joseph Stein, and Jerry Bock, combined to create something that is as timeless in its own way as any musical could ever be.
But, what can you say about the WJT-Rainbow Stage co-production of “Fiddler'” that couldn’t possibly avoid using superlatives? Playing to a sold-out audience on opening night, Wednesday, September 9, even though there was a slight chill in the air as the evening wore on – and certainly mounting a show at Rainbow Stage in September is a chancy proposition – the evening was one of pure magic.
I don’t know who came up with the idea of having the orchestra play behind the performers – as opposed to the usual practice of having them play in the pit in front of the stage – but it was sheer genius to do that. I’ve often attended Rainbow Stage and been frustrated that the singers’ voices are drowned out by the musicians’ instruments – but not this night.
Each note sung could be heard clear as a bell – even from the children who played Tevye and Golde’s youngest daughters.
The performances were universally excellent – all the way from Daniel Kash as Tevye and Debbie Maslowsky (a name very familiar both to WJT and Rainbow Stage attendees) to everyone else in the cast. It would be unfair to single out anyone in the cast for special praise; they were all so good, but if there was one moment that was absolutely thrilling above all else, it was when the opening note to the Russian song “Za vashe zdorovye” (to your health) in the famous tavern scene that culminates with “To Life” was belted out.
And, having the Rusalka Ukrainian dancers perform only added to the evening’s excitement. The exuberance they brought to the wedding scene was a demonstration of how combining the talents of one of Winnipeg’s most exciting dance troupes with many Winnipeg performers who had previously appeared either in WJT or Rainbow Stage productions was a demonstration of just how much talent there is right here in Winnipeg.
Sadly, by the time this is published this version of “Fiddler on the Roof” is only scheduled to be performed two more times: Saturday, Sept. 12, at 7:30 pm and Sunday, Sept. 13, at 2:00 pm. Tickets had been going fast as of the time of publication, but if you want to check with the box office, the number is 204-989-0888
Local News
From a ‘pie in the sky’ idea to 2,400 young hockey players
By BERNIE BELLAN I didn’t used to cover sports for The Jewish Post & News except for the odd occasion.
For years we could count on the late, great Harvey Rosen to comb the waterfront, looking for any sports story that might have the least connection to anything Jewish. Harvey would even go into visiting teams’ locker rooms during Winnipeg Jets games and, if a player had a name that sounded Jewish, inquire whether that player might be Jewish.
Then, for a few years, we added well-known sports writer Scott Taylor to the mix. Scott offered quite a different perspective, looking for stories about athletes that went far behind the scenes to uncover details that other reporters might have missed.
With both Harvey and Scott gone from our pages, I’ve occasionally found myself filling the sports void. These days, however, I tend to wait for an interesting story to find me.
And that’s exactly what happened with Wheatland Hockey.
Recently, my neighbours Elliot and Linda Katz mentioned that they knew of a Jewish couple who had started a hockey development program in Winnipeg. The couple, Rich Hechter and Rachel Wolfenson, had apparently started Wheatland Hockey only about 16 months earlier.
I subsequently learned that, in that short time, more than 2,400 young hockey players had gone through Wheatland’s various programs.
That number got my attention.
So, I contacted Rachel and Rich to find out what they had created — and why.
It started with a gap
The idea for Wheatland began, as Rachel described it to me, as “this little pie in the sky idea that we were going to have a spring development program in the spring of 2025.”
They started with about 50 kids spread across three age groups.
Sixteen months later, Wheatland has grown into a broad hockey-development organization offering programs for players from U9 through U15, along with specialized programming, female hockey, spring and summer teams, events and high-performance opportunities.
But the numbers aren’t really the story.
The story is why they thought Wheatland needed to exist in the first place.
Rich and Rachel felt there was a gap between traditional minor hockey and the highly specialized — and often expensive — training programs available to elite players.
There were plenty of opportunities for kids to play hockey. But what about the player who needed to improve one particular part of their game? What about the U9 player whose parents had no idea what skills their child should be working on? What about the player who wasn’t an elite athlete but had the potential to become a much better hockey player with the right instruction?
That was the space they wanted Wheatland to occupy.
As Rachel explained it, some families come to Wheatland knowing exactly what their child needs.
“They might know that the kid’s gap is power skating,” she told me. “They might have a great shot and great stick handling, but they’re not strong skaters.”
Other families arrive with a much less specific question.
“They’re new U9 families,” Rachel said. “Their kids have been spat out of the Timbits world and into the U9 world and they don’t know what to focus on.”
That’s where Rich comes in.
‘Pedagogy on ice’
Rich brings an unusual background to hockey coaching.
He is currently taking a one-year sabbatical from his role as vice-principal of Brock Corydon School, the Winnipeg school often known as the only public school Hebrew bilingual program in North America. For many families in Winnipeg’s Jewish community, Brock Corydon is where they know Rich best.
Before becoming a vice-principal, he worked as a high school teacher and as a university professor in the Faculty of Education. He has also spent more than a decade coaching youth hockey.
This year, rather than stepping away from education, Rich is using his sabbatical as an opportunity to continue learning, writing, and growing as a coach and mentor while devoting more time to developing Wheatland Hockey.
That additional time will also allow Wheatland to extend its reach beyond Winnipeg through a new initiative called “Wheatland on the Road”.
Over the coming year, Rich will travel to rural Manitoba communities including Manitou, St. Laurent, Lundar, Steinbach and Elm Creek to lead coaching and mentoring sessions for local players and coaches.
The initiative reflects Wheatland’s belief that access to quality coaching should not depend on where a young player lives. It also gives Rich an opportunity to work directly with local hockey communities, sharing ideas and helping coaches develop their own approaches to teaching the game.
For Rich, education and hockey aren’t separate worlds.
Rachel described his approach as “pedagogy on ice.”
The idea is simple: coaching isn’t just about showing a young player how to execute a skill. It’s about understanding how that player learns, figuring out what they need, and creating an environment where they can improve.
That educational philosophy is evident in the way Wheatland approaches development.
Its programs focus on areas such as skating, puck control, shooting, passing and receiving, positional play, defensive skills, checking, hockey IQ and tactical understanding.
But the organization also talks openly about developing confidence, resilience and character.
The Wheatland philosophy is summed up on its website as building “skills, character and excellence — on and off the ice.”
And that distinction is important to Rich.
The objective isn’t simply to produce better hockey players.
It’s to help young people become better learners, teammates and competitors.
A Jewish leadership team in an unlikely business
There is also an irony at the heart of Wheatland’s success.
We are not exactly the people known for our sporting prowess, and none of the people leading Wheatland played in the NHL. Yet, the organization is run by Rachel and Rich, with Ryan Paul, Eleni Wener, Avi Walker and Dustin Roitelman in senior leadership roles.
That may be unusual in the hockey world, but it is also part of what makes Wheatland distinctive.
This is not a business built around former professional players leveraging on their own playing careers. It is being led by people who believe deeply in the values Wheatland has developed — and continues to develop.
They believe in teaching young people how to learn, how to work with others, how to persevere and how to contribute to their communities.
In that sense, Wheatland’s leadership team reflects the organization’s broader philosophy: hockey expertise matters, but so do education, mentorship, organization, empathy and a commitment to making the game more accessible.
The fact that this group has helped build a hockey organization serving thousands of young players from across Manitoba is, in its own way, pretty remarkable.
Making hockey and coaching accessible
Perhaps the most important word in Wheatland’s philosophy is accessibility.
“Accessibility is one of our guiding principles,” Rachel said. “We believe that all kids should have the opportunity to get on the ice, regardless of socioeconomic conditions.”
For Rich and Rachel, accessibility means more than making hockey available. They believe that good coaching should be accessible, too.
That commitment is reflected in Wheatland’s “Pay-What-You-Can” program, which helps ensure that financial circumstances do not prevent children and families from participating in quality hockey programming.
For Rachel and Rich, the program is one way of giving back to the broader community. They believe that hockey — and the opportunity to learn from good coaches — should be available to as many young people as possible, not limited only to families who can afford the full cost of specialized training.
That doesn’t mean Wheatland is trying to be everything to everyone.
Rather, the idea is that a family shouldn’t need to have an elite-level hockey player — or an elite-level hockey budget — to access good coaching.
The organization keeps its groups relatively small. A typical session might have four or five players, while a larger session could have as many as 20, with several coaches on the ice.
The result is that a player who shows up to a smaller session can end up receiving something approaching a semi-private lesson without the family having to pay a premium for that experience.
And, Rachel noted, if only a handful of players show up for a session, “they would get the benefit of a semi-private class for a very inexpensive cost.”
Building coaches, too
Wheatland’s emphasis on development doesn’t stop with the players.
The organization has also created a Junior Coach program, through which some of its younger participants have an opportunity to begin learning how to teach the game themselves.
Five of Wheatland’s junior coaches are under the age of 15.
That’s significant because it reflects another part of Rich and Rachel’s philosophy: hockey development isn’t simply about producing better players. It’s about creating people who can contribute to the hockey community.
The organization’s coaching staff also includes experienced coaches with backgrounds in player development, athletic development and hockey education.
The same philosophy is at the heart of Wheatland on the Road. By working with coaches in rural communities, Rich hopes to help build local coaching capacity so that players can continue benefiting from quality instruction long after his visit is over.
Hockey as a bridge between communities
One of Wheatland’s most memorable recent initiatives involved a visiting Israeli hockey club.
The visiting players took part in two on-ice sessions with Rich and Ryan. After changing out of their gear, the young players then visited Rich at Brock Corydon School, where they met with grade 5 and 6 students.
For the players from Israel, the experience offered more than additional hockey instruction. It gave them an opportunity to connect with Winnipeg students through a shared language — the language of hockey — while also learning about one another’s communities.
For Wheatland, the sessions demonstrated how hockey can create meaningful connections that extend well beyond the rink.
Rachel and Rich
While Rich is the face of Wheatland on the ice, Rachel’s role is largely behind the scenes.
A Senior Investment Advisor with TD Private Wealth Management, Rachel brings an entirely different skill set to the organization, overseeing operations and communications and helping ensure that families have a positive experience from the moment they register.
The division of responsibilities seems to work. Rachel brings the organizational perspective needed to turn an idea into an operation. Rich brings the educator’s perspective to player development.
The broader leadership team brings additional experience, energy and commitment to the values that guide Wheatland.
And somewhere along the way, that little “pie in the sky” idea became something considerably larger.
More than 2,400 kids have now gone through Wheatland’s programs in just 16 months.
That’s a lot of hockey players. But when I asked Rachel what she thought accounted for that kind of growth, her answer wasn’t really about hockey.
It was about giving families something they were looking for.
“We teach people first, we teach hockey second,” is the philosophy Rich and Rachel have adopted.
Perhaps that’s why Wheatland has grown so quickly.
Because for all the talk about hockey development, what they are really trying to develop is something bigger: young people who feel supported, challenged and capable of getting better.
And through initiatives such as the Pay-What-You-Can program, Wheatland on the Road and its work with visiting teams, Wheatland is also showing how hockey can be both accessible and a bridge between communities.
If the first 16 months are any indication, there are a lot of Winnipeg families — and perhaps many potential community partners across Manitoba — who were looking for exactly that.
For more information about Wheatland Hockey, visit Wheatland Hockey.
Local News
“Chanukah Guilt: A Jewish Holiday Murder Mystery”
Review –Interview by MARTIN ZEILIG
With “Chanukah Guilt: A Jewish Holiday Murder Mystery” (Scribal Scion Publishing 182 pg. $20.00) Winnipeg author Avra Love steps confidently into the world of cozy Jewish crime fiction, delivering a warm, witty, and culturally textured novel that feels instantly familiar to anyone who has spent time in a synagogue social hall.
Published by Scribal Scion in August 2026, the book marks a notable shift from Love’s earlier works — the playful children’s book “Don’t Wake Mommy!” and her flash fiction collection “Into the Junk Drawer” — yet it carries forward her trademark blend of humour, character insight, and affection for the small dramas of everyday life.
Love, who was interviewed by email for this article, grew up surrounded by stories and language, and that early immersion shows. She had long wanted to take on a larger scale project, and this idea — sparked by her own experiences participating in holiday craft sales — lent itself naturally to expansion.
“I was always struck by the diversity and energy you find at these events,” she says. “When I considered it as a background for my story, I chose to make it a Jewish setting.”
The novel unfolds over a single day: the pre Chanukah craft sale at a local synagogue. It’s the kind of event many Jewish readers will recognize immediately — twenty vendors, tables overflowing with handmade goods, the hum of conversation, and the quiet hope that the turnout will justify all the effort.
Into this bustling scene steps Becky, the first time coordinator of the sale, who has taken on the job mostly because no one else would. Becky’s background as a theatre director gives her a keen eye for personalities, staging, and the subtle tensions that animate a room. It also makes her an unexpectedly capable amateur sleuth when a sudden death shatters the cheerful atmosphere.
Love’s decision to set the mystery within a single communal event is inspired. The synagogue social hall becomes a microcosm of Jewish communal life — warm, opinionated, occasionally chaotic, and full of characters who are both endearing and exasperating. The vendors, each with their quirks and motivations, form a lively ensemble cast. Their interactions provide humour, texture, and a steady stream of clues as Becky tries to piece together what happened before the police arrive.
The tone throughout is unmistakably cozy.
Love isn’t interested in grisly details or procedural complexity; her focus is on character, community, and the gentle absurdities that arise when ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The dialogue is sharp and often funny, peppered with Hebrew and Yiddish expressions that feel authentic rather than ornamental. A glossary at the end ensures that readers of all backgrounds can follow along without missing the cultural flavour.
Behind the scenes, Hanukah Guilt was very much a labour of love.
The book began as a “piecework project built over sporadic bouts of creativity,” Love explains, and then underwent multiple revisions.
All told, it took most of three years to complete. When it came time to publish, she didn’t hesitate to bring the manuscript to Scribal Scion.
“I had such a great experience working with James Gershfield on my first children’s book that I went to him first — and I’m glad I did. I’ve been so appreciative of his hard work and expertise in helping me craft the finished product.”
What elevates Hanukah Guilt is Love’s ability to balance levity with sincerity. Beneath the humour lies a genuine appreciation for Jewish communal spaces — their warmth, their imperfections, and their role as gathering points for tradition, creativity, and connection. Becky’s determination to solve the mystery is less about heroism and more about responsibility: to the vendors, to the event, and to the community she cares about.
Love’s writing career continues to expand. In addition to this novel, she has two new Jewish children’s picture books underway with Scribal Scion Kids and continues to write short stories in her spare time. Hanukah Guilt is her third published book — and her most ambitious to date.
In Hanukah Guilt, Avra Love has crafted a charming, accessible, and distinctly Jewish mystery that will resonate with readers across generations. It is a welcome addition to holidaythemed fiction and a delightful new chapter in the career of a Winnipeg writer whose voice continues to grow in range and confidence.
This is a book that belongs on Jewish bookshelves — and one that will make readers smile even as they turn the pages in search of clues.
Avra Love is a Winnipeg educator with a background in English Language studies and Philosophy. She is the author of three books: the flash fiction collection “Into the Junk Drawer,” the children’s book “Don’t Wake Mommy!,” and her new cozy mystery “Hanukah Guilt: A Jewish Holiday Murder Mystery.” She loves to read, write, craft, and practice healthy living.
