Local News
“Anti-Zionist” Jews Disgrace Themselves
By HENRY SREBRNIK Is so-called “anti-Zionism” antisemitic? It was not always so. Prior to the Holocaust and the creation of a Jewish state, many Jews did consider Zionism – a return to the Land of Israel — unworkable, unnecessary, even wrong-headed. In the United States, prior to the Holocaust, Reform Jews in the American Council for Judaism were committed to the proposition that Jews are not a national but a religious group. Jewish socialists and others on the political left, including the influential Jewish Labour Bund, were opposed to what they thought was an ideological “bourgeois” error.
But these were internal debates in the Diaspora, and in any case most non-Jewish people had little say about them — if they even bothered to pay any attention to these internal arguments within Jewish circles. Nor, obviously, did those politically against the Zionist movement ally with pogromists who slaughtered Jews.
All of that is history, really part of a vanished Jewish world. Yes, there are remnants of that past, in sectors of the haredi world. The Satmar Hasidim are the most visible. They are theologically committed to a reading of Jewish history that considers that the recreation of a Jewish nation must await the Messiah. They are “anti-Zionists” in the legitimate sense of the word, but no one thinks they want to kill the Jews in Israel or elsewhere.
That’s a different matter than today’s Jewish anti-Zionists, who are largely uninformed about Judaism, Jewish history and culture. They are a fringe group, allied with states and ideologies that want to eliminate the existing Jewish state of Israel and perhaps even murder most of its Jewish population and expel the remainder. Today’s version has more to do with pre-war German Nazi eliminationism than with long-forgotten intra-Jewish disputes.
Assimilated into left-wing movements and doctrines, these Jews are in most cases little more than Jews through genealogy, “Jews in name only,” making political use of that on behalf of those wishing to destroy Israel. Their “anti-Zionism” is part of the larger antisemitic movements arrayed against us, and they serve, to use a well-known term, “useful idiots.” They make use of general slogans, identity politics and symbolic statements like wearing a keffiyeh, with minimal complexity and knowledge.
They are producing vast amounts of simplistic one-sided literature and media. One example is the film “Israelism,” the story of two young American Jews “raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs” who “join the movement battling the old guard over Israel’s centrality in American Judaism, and demanding freedom for the Palestinian people.” Call them “Jewish shields” for the pro-Palestinian left that is glorifying the post-October 7 pogrom by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“Antisemitism in Canada and abroad is primarily presenting itself through the prism of anti-Zionism, which, in my opinion, is the most pervasive form of antisemitism, and the most perverse in a number of ways,” remarked Casey Babb, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Institute for National Security Studies. I guess our Jewish “anti-Zionists,” wilfully blinded by the company they keep, refuse to see what’s in front of our eyes.
Fortunately, here in Canada, despite the noise they make, such anti-Zionist Jews are a tiny and marginalized group. Professor Robert Brym of the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto and probably Canada’s most eminent Jewish academic, on May 30 released an addition to his lengthy “Jews and Israel Survey 2024” published in the spring 2024 issue of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies.
To his question “Do you believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state?” 91 per cent of his Canadian Jewish respondents answered in the affirmative, six per cent said they don’t know, and only three percent said no.
We know the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The belief that the Jews, alone among the people of the world, do not have a right to self-determination, or that the Jewish people’s religious and historical connection to Israel is invalid, is inherently bigoted. When Jews are verbally or physically harassed or Jewish institutions and houses of worship are vandalized in response to actions of the State of Israel, it is antisemitism.
Expressions of anti-Zionism include downplaying or negating the historic and spiritual Jewish connection to the land of Israel, and the insistence on holding Israel to unreasonable standards when viewing its response to threats in comparison to the actions of other members of the international community.
Now many of these Jewish anti-Zionists don’t necessarily agree with everything listed above. But by associating and collaborating with those who do, they are at the very least, to use an old-fashioned phrase, “fellow travellers” allied to these antisemitic movements. And they can be paraded before the media as Jews who have seen the evil that Israel causes. What better evidence?
Some of Canada’s most disruptive actions and blockades have been coordinated by groups with U.S. funding and organizational links. For example, the Tides Foundation, a San Francisco-based “social justice” non-profit has supported Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow, among others, in the United States. Both have been perennial organizers of anti-Israel rallies and blockades.
The Canadian affiliate of JVP, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, calls itself a “grassroots organization in Canada grounded in Jewish tradition that opposes all forms of racism & advocates for justice and peace for all in Palestine-Israel.” It calls Zionism “the political ideology that has provided the basis for Israel’s settler-colonial project and unfolding genocide in Palestine.”
They are indeed “useful,” and antisemites know it. On May 27, for instance, a representative was on Parliament Hill holding a press conference insisting that the country’s network of pro-intifada campus encampments was not antisemitic.
On June 10 the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), one of Canada’s largest public sector unions, which is actively engaged in Pro-Palestinian activities, held a discussion “Addressing Islamophobia and antisemitism in the Workplace.” Of course no Jew supporting Israel was invited, not even Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, and a former ambassador to Israel.
The panelists were Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, and, on the Jewish side, Avi Lewis, a former Al Jazeera correspondent and now an associate professor of “social and political change” at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
However, Lewis, scion of a prominent family that has been for decades active in the New Democratic Party – grandfather David led the federal NDP and father Stephen was head of the Ontario party — is an active “anti-Zionist,” a member of the anti-Zionist Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and a co-founder of the UBC chapter of the Jewish Faculty Network.
Richard Marceau, vice president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said the union’s efforts at doing something about antisemitism were disappointing.
“Inviting someone like Avi Lewis — who is not an expert on antisemitism, who is a marginal figure in the Jewish community and who is viciously opposed to Israel — to train union members on antisemitism shows how unserious PSAC is about combatting Jew-hatred,” he stated.
Yes, Jews can be Jew-haters too. (The term “self-hating Jew” is silly; they hate other Jews, not themselves.) Such Jews now face anti-Israel sentiment of unprecedented ferocity, often couched in the language of social justice, critical race theory, and so-called intersectionality. It is sustained by the hegemonic hold of a theory of “settler colonialism,” now ubiquitous in Canada’s universities, and one which deems Israel an illegitimate colonial settler state.
And Palestinian academics known how to use this terminology to make their case. Typical is an article by Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. In a May 30 oped, “Instead of Recognizing ‘Palestine,’ Countries Should Withdraw Recognition of Israel,” published on the website Middle East Eye, he uses all the correct buzzwords, referring to “Israel’s illegality as an institutionally Jewish supremacist racist state.” He considers the very establishment of this “settler-colonialist” state “an illegal act and in violation of the very UN resolutions that proposed its establishment.”
Massad therefore advocates the “dismantlement of Israel’s racist structures and laws” in favour of “one decolonised state, from the river to the sea, in which everyone living within it is equal before the law and does not benefit from any racial, ethnic, or religious privileges.” Only the end of the Israeli “settler-colonial state” will lead to a “decolonised anti-racist and democratic outcome.”
Massad’s analysis and prescription is the true bedrock Palestinian position, as presented for western ears. (Hamas’ creed is a different matter.) The theoretical construct behind it is one that fits completely within today’s liberal-progressive ideology espoused by the intellectual elites in western countries now. The “anti-Zionist” Jews reading them usually know far less about what the Jewish people have gone through historically. This makes them easy prey for our enemies.
Natan Sharansky, currently Chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), and McGill University history professor Gil Troy, in a June 16, 2021 Tablet article entitled “The Un-Jews,” asserted that these people “are trying to disentangle Judaism from Jewish nationalism, the sense of Jewish peoplehood.” And the voices of these “inflamed Jewish opponents of Israel and Zionism are in turn amplified by a militant progressive superstructure that now has an ideological lock on the discourse in American academia, publishing, media, and the professions.”
We hear it from progressives like the author Naomi Klein, who is professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia (and married to Avi Lewis). Klein’s Passover message in the April 24 British Guardian newspaper was headlined “We Need an Exodus from Zionism.” She told readers that “we don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name.”
For Klein, Zionism “takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery– the story of Passover itself — and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.” The creation of the State of Israel, and the entire Zionist movement, was a ghastly mistake and Jewish life is best led in exile.
“Arguing for the purity of exile and powerlessness, and demanding abandonment of the now-impure Jewish State,” Elliott Abrams, currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, observes sadly that “we have indeed been watching the young American Jews who helped build those campus tent cities and joined the denunciations of the Jewish State.”
In “American Jewish Anti-Zionist Diasporism: A Critique,” in the May 2024 issue of the British periodical Fathom, he sees them following the lead of “the hundreds of Jewish professors who wish to proclaim their virtue by lining up against the Jewish State.”
Finally, there are the many Jews like Rabbi Elchanan Poupko, the president of EITAN–the American Israeli Jewish Network, whose anger at anti-Zionists is palpable. In “Anti-Zionist Jews, Have You Seen the Mirror?” a blog published on the Times of Israel website, May 28, 2024, he points out their hypocrisy.
“The people who were angry at Birthright for taking them on a free, all-expenses paid trip to Israel without taking them to Gaza, Ramallah, and Sheikh Jarrah were somehow unable to utter the words Kibbutz Be’eri, Sderot, Metula, Kiryat Shmona, or the massacre at Nova music festival. Those who were angry at their teachers for celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut with no mention of the Nakba were suddenly unable to speak about the Hamas charter calling for the killing of Jews worldwide.
“Yet perhaps worst of all, was not what anti-Zionist Jews said — or did not say — but rather the company anti-Zionist Jews have chosen to keep. Over the past few months, anti-Zionist Jews have stood shoulder to shoulder with masked and uniformed individuals in public places, physically blocking off ‘Zionists.’”
They exclude their fellow Jews from public spaces in universities, side with terrorist organizations that call for the annihilation of all Jews in the world and make partnerships “with what is objectively the most antisemitic movement since the Holocaust,” he writes.
Rabbi Poupko lives in New Haven, Connecticut. The region is home to Yale University, Quinnipiac University, Albertus Magnus College, the University of New Haven, and Southern Connecticut State University, making it a hub of higher education – and, of course, pro-Palestinian protests. “I got to see firsthand what anti-Zionism in Jewish spaces meant. A group of anti-Zionist Jews shared to their social media videos with cheers like ‘there is only one solution – intifada revolution,’ which is a call for deadly violence.”
As Iran began shooting ballistic missiles and drones carrying hundreds of tons of explosives at Israel’s civilian population, “many anti-Zionist Jews were there to explain why Iran was justified in its attacks on Israel. Jewish Voices for Peace posted a photo of Houthis in Yemen praising the pro-terror mobs on campus.”
He concludes by noting the irony of anti-Zionist Jews siding with the mobs behind the greatest push for Diasporic Jews to move to Israel. “Those who want you to believe Jewish safety should not depend on the State of Israel have helped make much of the diaspora unsafe for Jews and Jewish life.” When the people you march with “are the reason countless synagogues, JCCs, and day schools are hiring more security, you probably don’t get credit for making Jewish life in the Diaspora more appealing.”
Such Jews are betting their present and future will be outside the confines of the Jewish people, and they will do anything to gain the acceptance of the antisemitic circles in which they traffic. “When anti-Zionist Jews hold signs that say: ‘this Jew is against genocide,’ besides for defaming other Jews as being for genocide, they also often forget the truly genocidal company they keep, company that would like to eradicate the State of Israel. It is time for anti-Zionist Jews to take a look in the mirror.”
Bottom line: Whatever we call it, and however they can be distinguished, both terms, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, are in today’s context simply manifestations of Jew- hatred.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.
Local News
Local foodie finds fame by trying foods on Facebook Marketplace
By BERNIE BELLAN Disclaimer: The subject of this story is my daughter, but don’t hold that against me.
Shira Bellan is an intrepid adventurer when it comes to trying out new foods. A while ago, as she explained in an interview conducted with her by CJOB’s Hal Anderson on January 28, Shira was just laying on her couch scrolling through Facebook Marketplace when she came up with the idea of trying different foods and posting her reactions to them – first on Facebook, then when she developed a following – on Instagram, followed by a YouTube channel and, at my suggestion, on TikTok. She now has tens of thousands of followers all over the world, with her audience growing every day.
Following are excerpts from the interview:
Anderson: How did you come up with this idea?
Bellan: Honestly, I was just, uh, laying on my couch browsing Marketplace like I often do, and I kept seeing food pop up and I just thought it would be hilarious to start buying food and then reviewing it because I thought there were some very interesting food items on there. And I was pretty surprised that people were trying to sell them on Marketplace. And it just made me laugh. And so I thought, “Let’s do this.”
Anderson What have you found out?
Bellan: Yeah, I kind of think that it’s a bunch of family members that say to each other, “This is so good. You should sell this.” And it’s not easy to get your food into a restaurant or into a bakery. And Facebook Marketplace is thriving and it’s super easy to use for anyone of all ages, and I think Facebook is just super well known.
So I think people started putting super simple food items up there and I really think my page has made it explode a lot bigger as of lately. But I think there’s always been food on there. I just don’t think it was as big until very recently.
I’ve always seen people selling food, and I’ve gone, “Well, I wouldn’t want to try that, that doesn’t look very good, or man, that looks great. I would love to try that.”
And I think in many cases it’s food tied to an ethnicity of one kind or another that maybe we wouldn’t normally get to try in a restaurant in Winnipeg.
Anderson: Right. So good for you for doing this because you’re sort of, without me having to do it, you’re saying, “Yeah, this is worth it, or, or this one isn’t.”
Bellan: That’s exactly what I’m doing. And it’s been interesting. I’m loving chatting with the different people, the different languages, and just exploring all the foods and, and there’re some foods that I’m trying that people from that specific ethnicity are saying, “Oh God, do not eat that.”
I’ve had some good ones, I’ve had some bad ones. And for the most part though, it’s really good. I think it’s just cool to learn about other people’s heritage and what they eat and like.
Anderson: So you said – in the clip I just played (referencing a clip he played before Shira came on the air) I love that one – the butter chicken. But if you had stuff that you bought that you went, “Oh man, this is a miss.” What would you say?
Bellan: I’m quite nervous to post some of the ones I don’t like because I’m called racist multiple times a week. And I’ve tried to make it clear that when I don’t like something, it has absolutely zero to do with the culture, ethnicity, or country that the food’s from, it has everything to do with how the food tastes.
And I need to remind people that these are home chefs. I don’t know how they made the recipe. I don’t know that they followed a recipe. I don’t know that they didn’t put dog food in it. So, if I don’t like something, it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It means that I personally did not like it.
I try to be very open-minded to foods. I don’t eat meat. I’ll occasionally eat chicken – so that kind of eliminates a lot of the foods that I’m able to buy on there. But I am very interested in all the different ethnicities and their foods. Some of ’em are very scary ’cause they’re not foods I would eat every day, but it would be very boring if I was just buying chicken fingers and fries off marketplace.
Anderson: Well, that’s how I feel sometimes, right? I mean, even, you know, even with these delivery apps now, if we decide, well, we’re gonna order in, we’ll spend sometimes way too long deciding what we’re gonna have. Because it feels like even though we have all these incredible choices, it feels like it’s the same, four or five things and we don’t feel like it.
So I I like what you’ve done. Listen, on people being critical when you say you don’t like a certain food. You’re gonna have those people – trust me, being in the business I’m in, you’re gonna have people that are gonna make that connection. And just based on what I’ve seen of your stuff I don’t get a hint at all that it’s about the people you bought it from or their ethnicity.
It’s just you aren’t a fan of that particular food. And they may have made it perfectly, but you’re just not into that food.
Bellan: Exactly, and I’ve tried some North American foods that just tasted disgusting, too. And again, it’s home chefs and as for myself – I am the worst cook on the planet.
If I put something on Marketplace and someone ate it, they wouldn’t be ridiculing me. They’d be ridiculing my horrible cooking skills. What’s more fun for me is trying these foods that I consider strange. I had a really interesting one today. It was like a slippery, slimy, gooey shrimp. I couldn’t do it.
Someone might like it, but nope. Wasn’t for me.
Anderson: Yeah, and you’ve had some really cool ones, like a fairly recent post is the marshmallow flowers. I mean, incredible, incredible.
Bellan: They tasted unbelievable too. They did not taste like a store-bought, packaged marshmallow. They had a very unique flavour and texture.
They tasted amazing. I would eat them every day and the girl who makes them puts so much time and love into them. She told me that it takes about two days to make with all the processing and all the different steps it takes, and they were so beautiful. I didn’t want to eat them, but of course I did.
Anderson: Here’s the other thing too, about what you’re doing it, and you tell me, you probably didn’t realize this when you started doing it, but in some cases where you do this and you got a lot of followers, you’re getting a lot of views.
And when you say, “man, this is really good.” That person then gets maybe more orders than they can handle, but many of them are really happy about that. You had them call you up in tears after the fact and say, you know, “I was selling these dishes to make a couple of bucks ’cause my, my family is struggling” and now they’ve got more orders than they know what to do with.
And, you have really helped them make ends meet.
If you would like to see any of Shira’s food review videos you can look for them on Instagram by entering winnipegmarketplacefoodfinds or on YouTube enter @shira_time
Local News
The Simkin Centre received over $500,000 in charitable contributions in 2025 – so why is its CEO complaining that “it cannot make the same number of bricks with less straw?”
By BERNIE BELLAN (This story was originally posted on January 14) I’ve been writing about the Simkin Centre’s aacumulated deficit situation ($779,000 according to its most recent financial report) for some time.
On January 14 I published an article on this website, in which I tried to find out why a personal care home that has an endowment fund valued at over $11 million is running such a huge deficit.
Following is that article, followed by a lengthy email exchange I had with Don Aronovitch, who is a longtime director of the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation. My purpose in writing the original article, along with the update, is I’m attempting to ascertain why the Simkin Centre simply doesn’t use more of the charitable donations it receives each year to address its financial situation rather than investing then under the management of the Jewish Foundation:
Here is the article first posted on January 14: A while back I published an article about the deficit situation at the Simkin Centre. (You can read it at “Simkin Centre deficit situation.“) I was prompted to write that particular article after reading a piece written by Free Press Faith writer John Longhurst in the August 5 issue of the Free Press about the dire situation personal care homes in Winnipeg are in when it comes to trying to provide their residents with decent food.
Yet, Longhurst made one very serious mistake in his article when he wrote that the “provincial government, through the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, has not increased the amount of funding it provides for care-home residents in Manitoba since 2009.”
In fact, the WRHA has given annual increases to personal care homes, but its allocations are not broken down by categories, such as food or salaries. As a spokesperson for the WRHA explained to me in an email: “PCHs receive per diem global operating funding based on the number of licensed beds they operate. This funding model is designed to support the full range of operating costs associated with resident care, including staffing, food services, utilities, building operations, and other day-to-day expenses.”
Now, one can make a perfectly valid argument that the level of funding from the WRHA has not kept up with inflation, especially inflation in food costs, but the Simkin Centre is in an even more precarious position because of the skyrocketing cost of kosher food.
“In recent years,” according to an article on the internet, “the cost of kosher food has increased significantly, often outpacing general food inflation due to unique supply chain pressures and specialized production requirements.”
Yet, when I asked Laurie Cerqueti how much maintaining a kosher facility has cost the Simkin Centre, as I noted in my previous article about the deficit situation at Simkin, she responded: “approximately $300,000 of our deficit was due to food services. I do not have a specific number as far as how much of the deficit is a result of kosher food…So really this is not a kosher food issue as much is it is an inflation and funding issue.”
One reader, however, after having read my article about the deficit situation at Simkin, had this to say: “In John Longhurst’s article on Aug 5, 2025 in the Free Press, Laurie (Cerqueti) was quoted as saying that the annual kosher meal costs at Simkin were $6070 per resident. At Bethania nursing home in 2023, the non-kosher meal costs in 2023 were quoted as $4056 per resident per year. Even allowing for a 15% increase for inflation over 2 years, the non-kosher food costs there would be $4664.40 or 24% lower than Simkin’s annual current kosher food costs. If Simkin served non-kosher food to 150 of its 200 residents and kosher food to half of its Jewish residents who wish to keep kosher, by my calculation it would save approximately $200,000/year. If all of Simkin’s Jewish residents wished to keep kosher, the annual savings would be slightly less at $141,000.”
But – let’s be honest: Even though many Jewish nursing homes in the US have adopted exactly that model of food service – where kosher food is available to those residents who would want it, otherwise the food served would be nonkosher, it appears that keeping Simkin kosher – even though 45% of its residents aren’t even Jewish – is a “sacred cow” (pun intended.)
So, if Simkin must remain kosher – even though maintaining it as a kosher facility is only adding to its accumulated deficit situation – which currently stands at $779,426 as of March 31, 2025,I wondered whether there were some other ways Simkin could address its deficit while still remaining kosher.
In response to my asking her how Simkin proposes to deal with its deficit situation, Laurie Cerqueti wrote: “There are other homes in worse financial position than us. There are 2 homes I am aware of that are in the process of handing over the keys to the WRHA as they are no longer financially sustainable.”
I wondered though, whether the Simkin Centre Foundation, which is managed by the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba might not be able to help the Simkin Centre reduce its deficit. According to the Jewish Foundation’s 2024 annual report, The Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation, which is managed by the Jewish Foundation, had a total value of $11,017,635.
The Jewish Foundation did distribute $565,078 to the Simkin Centre in 2024, but even so, I wondered whether it might be able to distribute more.
According to John Diamond, CEO of the Jewish Foundation, however, the bylaws of the Foundation dictate that no more than 5% of the value of a particular fund be distributed in any one year. There is one distinguishing characteristic about the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation, in that a portion of their fund is “encroachable.” The encroachable capital is not owned by JFM. It is held in trust by JFM but is beneficially owned by Simkin, similar to a “bank deposit”. While held by the JFM, these funds are included in the calculation of Simkin’s annual distribution.
I asked John Diamond whether any consideration had been given to increasing the distribution that the Jewish Foundation could make to the Simkin Centre above the 5% limit that would normally apply to a particular fund under the Foundation’s management.
Here is what John wrote in response: “The Simkin does have an encroachable fund. That means that at their request, they can encroach on the capital of that fund only (with restrictions). This encroachment is not an increased distribution; rather, it represents a return of capital that also negatively affects the endowment’s future distributions.
”It is strongly recommended that encroachable funds not be used for operating expenses. If you encroach and spend the capital, the organization will receive fewer distribution dollars in the next year and every year as the capital base erodes. Therefore, the intent of encroachable funds is for capital projects, not recurring expenses.”
I asked Laurie Cerqueti whether there might be some consideration given to asking for an “encroachment” into the capital within the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation?
She responded: “We are not in a position where we are needing to dip into the encroachable part of our endowment fund. Both of our Boards (the Simkin Centre board and the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation board) are aware of our financial situation and we are all working together to move forward in a sustainable way.”
At the same time though, I wondered where donations to the Simkin Centre end up? Do they all end up in the Simkin Centre Foundation, for instance, I asked Laurie Cerqueti on December 15.
Her response back then was: “All donations go through our Foundation.”
I was somewhat surprised to read that answer, so I asked a follow-up question for clarification: “Do all donations made to the Simkin Centre end up in the Simkin Centre Foundation at the Jewish Foundation?”
The response this time was: “No they do not.”
So, I asked: “So, how do you decide which donations end up at the Foundation? Is there a formula?”
Laurie’s response was: “We have a mechanism in place for this and it is an internal matter.”
Finally, I asked how then, the Simkin Centre was financing its accumulated deficit? Was it through a “line of credit with a bank?” I wondered.
To date, I have yet to receive a response to that question. I admit that I am puzzled that a personal care home which has a sizeable foundation supporting it would not want to dip into the capital of that foundation when it is facing a financial predicament. Yes, I can see wanting the value of the foundation to grow – but that’s for the future. I don’t know whether I’d call a $779,425 deficit a crisis; that’s for others to determine, but it seems pretty serious to me.
One area that I didn’t even touch upon in this article, though – and it’s something I’ve written about time and time again, is the quality of the food at the Simkin Centre.
To end this, I’ll refer to a quote Laurie Cerqueti gave to John Longhurst when he wrote his article about the problems personal care homes in Winnipeg are facing: “When it comes to her food budget, ‘we can’t keep making the same number of bricks with less straw.’ “
(Updated January 24): Since posting my original story January 14 I have been engaging in an email correspondence with Don Aronovitch, who is a longtime director of the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation.
On Jan. 19 I received this email from Don:
Hi Bernie,
Your burning question seems to be “Do all donations to the Simkin Centre end up going to the SC Foundation.”
In our attempts to explain the subtle workings of the Simkin Centre PCH, the Simkin Centre Foundation & the role of the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, we somehow have failed to answer your question. I trust that the following will do the job.
All donations to the Simkin Centre (PCH & Foundation) go to the SC Foundation as a ‘custodian’ for the PCH.
Then, at the direction of the PCH, the monies, in part or in whole, are transferred to the PCH either immediately or subsequently. Further, again at the PCH’s direction, a portion may be transferred to the Foundation’s Encroachable Building Reserve Fund at the JFM.
Regards,
Don Aronovitch
I responded to Don:
But how are the monies that are transferred to the PCH treated on the financial statement?
Is everything simply rolled in as part of “Contributions from the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre Foundation?”
On Jan. 22 Don responded:
Bernie,
I said previously and I repeat that the Simkin Centre has many sharp minds and therefore, it is eminently able to effect asset management strategies appropriate to the Simkin Centre’s ‘Big Picture’ which they understand fully. Having said that, please note that:
Other than the Simkin Stroll which brings in about $100k and goes directly into the Home’s operations to support the program being promoted, the annual contributions to the Simkin Centre are relatively nominal.
The suggestion that there may be a sub rosa plan to ‘starve‘ the PCH by stashing money in the Building Reserve Fund at the JFM is absurd, totally absurd!!
Don
I responded to Don:
Don,
According to the Simkin Centre Foundation’s filing with the CRA it received $205,797 in charitable donations in 2025 plus another $387,000 from other registered charities.
Would you describe those contributions as “relatively nominal?”
But – there is no way of knowing what portion of those donations was given back to the Simkin Centre for immediate use and what portion was invested by the Jewish Foundation.
Can you tell me why not? (Laurie says that is an “internal matter.” Why?)
By the way, I never wrote there was any plan to stash “money in the Building Reserve Fund at the JFM.”
I was simply asking what is the point of building up an endowment for future use when the Simkin Centre’s needs are immediate, viz., its accumulated deficit of $779,000.
Also, have you or any other members of the board had meals for a full week at the Simkin Centre? I have spoken to many residents during my time volunteering there who told me they find the quality of the food to be very poor.
Why I’m so persistent on this point Don is that Laurie Cerqueti has been making the case – quite often – that the amount of funding the Simkin Centre receives from the WRHA is far from adequate.
But, if it’s actually the case that the Simkin Centre receives a substantial amount in charitable donations each year, but chooses to invest a good chunk of those donations rather than spend them, then it’s hardly a valid criticism to make of the WRHA that it’s funding is inadequate.
Why is it so gosh darn difficult to come up with the amount Simkin has been receiving in charitable donations?
Could it be that it’s because a lot of people would be dismayed to learn the reason is that money is being invested rather than being spent?
-Bernie
Don responded:
Bernie,
I add the following to this, my last contribution to the thread below.
First, let’s stick with individual donors as those were the references you started with. Starting with the 2025 figure of $206,000 total, deduct $105,000 (from the Simkin Stroll) and also deduct the healthy 5 figure donation (from a longtime Simkin supporter). We then have approximately $60,000 from 20/30 individuals and YES, it is what I would call “relatively nominal”.
As an fyi, I am in Palm Springs and in the past several days, I have asked 4 individuals what would be their spending expectations of a charity to which they donated $25,000. The responses were almost identical and they can be summarized as “We only support organizations where we value their mission and trust their management. In trusting their management, we believe that they know best if our money should be used for current operations, for future operations or for both.“
Don
Does it make sense to say, as Don does, that when considering the amount of charitable dollars the Simkin Centre receives, one ought to deduct the proceeds from the Simkin Stroll and a “healthy 5 figure donation?” I don’t see the logic in that.
And, I’m still wondering: How much of the more than $500,000 in charitable donations the Simkin Centre received in 2025 came back to the Simkin Centre to fund its immediate needs and how much was invested?
Local News
New community security director well-suited for the challenge
By MYRON LOVE Despite his still-young age, William Sagel, our community’s newly appointed director of security, brings a wealth of experience to his new role.
“I have always been drawn to protecting others,” observes the personable Sagel. “It may reflect the difficult time growing up, being bullied throughout elementary school. I was small for my age, and I usually found myself breaking up fights.”
His early years, he recounts, were spent growing up in Nice, on the famed Riviera, where his father worked in construction management. At the age of 10, the family moved back to Montreal.
Back in Montreal, Sagel continued his studies, graduating from high school and CEGEP, then enlisting in the armed forces.
Following his army service, he began his career with the Dutch Diplomatic Security Service. While working abroad, a banking executive encouraged him to return to school and earn a university degree.
“I chose to come back to Montreal,” he says. “That is where my family is.”
Armed with a degree in political science, he embarked on a career in security consulting.
In 2023, after years of working in Canada, William began training security forces in Mali. “I was responsible for the training department. We had around 400 security personnel, providing them the tools and skills to be more effective at what they do,” he explains.
Sagel arrived in Winnipeg on December 1 to assume his new position.
“The major focus in our security program is to build resilience and empower the community,” he explains. “Developing a plan to be able to respond properly to future crises. We establish a baseline, where you are now and where you hope to be in five years’ time.”
He notes that our Jewish community can learn from the national network and security networks already established in Montreal and Toronto to provide security and peace of mind for community members.
“I plan to work on raising security standards,” he says. “With the rise in antisemitic incidents over the years and after October 7, we need to do more to mitigate threats. We must raise awareness through education and empower community members through training.”
He speaks about encouraging more people to contribute their time to strengthening our community in any way they can, especially through volunteering. He encourages anyone who is willing to participate to reach out to him directly.
“Over the next few months,” he reports, “I will be working with institutions to put programs in place that will build resilience. The goal is to provide long-term security not only for ourselves but also for future generations.”
When asked about the hostile environment for Jewish students on university campuses, he says that he has had positive discussions with both the Winnipeg Police Service and the University of Manitoba’s director of security, who are committed to providing a more conducive learning environment for students.
As to his impressions of his new Jewish community, he has only positive things to say. “I came here alone, but everyone has been super friendly and welcoming,” he comments. “A lot of people have reached out to me. I have had a lot of dinner invitations, but unfortunately have been very busy trying to get organized and settled.”
“I am looking forward to the next few months of exploring Manitoba, its parks and museums, and seeing what the city has to offer.”