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“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
Long-time Winnipeg doctor and Israeli colleague make medical app available to general public
By MYRON LOVE Seven years ago, Dr. Gerald Minuk, Canada’s first hepatologist (liver specialist), partnered with Israeli computer science student Daniel Iluz-Freundlich in founding Refuah Solutions Ltd (RSL). Their goal was to create an app – which they called PI-enroll (“PI” stands for “Principal Investigator”), which was designed to be used by clinical trial investigators that would save them time and effort so they could be more personally involved in seeing their trial patients.
Last month, they released their second app, this time for patients. The app, called Patient-empower, informs patients about clinical trials underway for their condition and helps them make an informed decision as to which trial best meets their specific needs and preferences.
“I was approaching retirement,” recalls Minuk, now Rady School of Medicine Professor Emeritus, who has been in practice in Winnipeg since 1987, and “I couldn’t see myself filling my days doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku. I wanted to be able to continue contributing to medical research and patient care.”
It just so happened that, at the time, Minuk was introduced to an Israeli student, Daniel Iluz-Freundlich, who had just finished studying Computer Sciences at the University of Winnipeg. (Minuk notes that Iluz-Freundlich – on graduating – received the Gold Medal in Computer Science.)
“Daniel is an exceptionally talented young man,” Minuk says. “So I tapped his computer programming skills to create our PI-enroll and subsequently, our Patient-empower apps.”
The friendship continued after Iluz-Freundlich returned to Israel in 2020 to begin medical school on a Phil and Elle Kives Scholarship, where he earned numerous honors. Iluz-Freundlich is currently an intensivist anesthesiologist at the Beilinson Hospital in Israel. Despite his new professional responsibilities, including caring for IDF forces wounded in Gaza– he has remained active with Refuah – as vice-president of the company.
Minuk adds that a dozen other senior professors of medicine also contributed to Refuah’s software design. “Together,” he reports, “the company represents 400+ years of clinical trial experience. That experience is being applied to identifying and addressing the major challenges investigators and patients face when conducting or participating in clinical trials.”`
He adds that Refuah Solutions has established a truly global network with company personnel in San Diego, São Paulo, Mexico City, London, Barcelona, Nairobi and Delhi thus far.
According to Minuk, the company has enjoyed worldwide success – with over 2,000 doctors in 40 countries and 50 drug companies signed on for the PI-enroll app. He attributes this success to the app’s impressive results. In a recent global clinical trial, Minuk reports, within 3-6 months of implementing PI-enroll, investigator personal involvement increased by 60% and with that, patient enrolment increased by 80%, patient drop-outs decreased by 50% and there were 20% fewer protocol deviations (mistakes made). In addition, 90% of PIs rated the App 8 out of 10 in terms of usefulness.
He adds that one site that had not enrolled any patients for 12 months, subsequently became the trial’s leading enrolment site.
Regarding the newly released Patient-empower app, Minuk notes that despite the many benefits patients derive from clinical trials including free and early access to new and often safer and more effective treatments, fewer than 10% of patients who would qualify for a clinical trial are ever invited to consider that option. “The problem,” he explains, “is that most Health Care Providers are either unaware of what clinical trials are underway in their area or if they are aware, don’t have the time to discuss the trials with their patients.”
Therefore, Minuk, Iluz-Freundlich and their team designed and recently released their second app – Patient-empower – which informs patients of what clinical trials are underway for their condition and empowers them to select the trial that prioritizes their needs over those of industry.
The platform, he explains, uses AI to generate concise, easy-to-understand summaries of clinical trials tailored to the patient’s location—city, state, country, or globally, depending on their preference. Each summary includes clear explanations of the patient eligibility criteria and key practical details, such as the likelihood of patients receiving a placebo, the number of required site visits, and other important practical considerations. It also suggests questions that patients should consider asking the investigator before they consent to enrolling. The trial information is presented in a shareable format to facilitate discussions with family, friends, and local healthcare providers—supporting both patient confidence and continuity of care.
Once a trial is selected, Minuk continues, Patient-empower provides the contact information for the trial investigator closest to the patient’s location, the trial’s sponsor and, where available, the world’s experts in the field.
The feature Minuk is most enthusiastic about is the “Recent Findings” page which keeps patients up to date on newly published clinical trial results and discoveries relevant to their condition.
“Patient-empower is available to patients from internet venues (App Store or Google Play) or through NFP organizations, associations, societies and patient support group web-sites,” he adds. “Although only recently released, we have already attracted interest from the American Diabetes Association, the Alzheimer’s Society of America, the Canadian Liver Foundation, Colorectal Cancer Canada, the American Myasthenia Gravis Society and many others.”
“Overall, Patient-empower informs patients, and more informed patients benefit everyone involved. After all, it’s the patient’s health; their voice should be heard,” Minuk concludes.
Local News
The South Seas come to the Asper Campus
By MYRON LOVE On Thursday, July 24, about 150 members of our Jewish community got a chance to sample the dance and music of the South Pacific. The event was billed as “Beyachad Together – Celebrating Indigeneity, land, culture and identity.”
The program featured both the Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble dancers and Steinbach-based Island Breeze Manitoba – which describes itself as “a high energy live band & Pacific Island dance team featuring authentic outfits and dances from the islands of Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand.”
According to Dr. Ruth Ashrafi, Regional Director of B’nai Brith Canada in Manitoba, the evening’s performance was connected to an Indigenous Peoples Conference that was held in Steinbach under the auspices of Island Breeze with participants from Canada, the United States (specifically Hawaii), Antigua and Bermuda in the Caribbean, South Africa, the Philippines, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific island countries of Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
“The conference organizers contacted B’nai Brith Canada,” Ashrafi reported. “They wanted to bring greetings to the Jewish community, as the indigenous people of the Land of Israel, and celebrate indigeneity together through dance and music.
“Their support in these difficult times is heartwarming.”
In her opening remarks as emcee for the evening, Ashrafi noted that “it is a great honour for the Jewish community to welcome so many indigenous guests from all over the world.”
She then related the story and miracle of Chanukah and connected it to the experience shared by many indigenous nations around the world.
“They have been told that their religion is wrong, their traditions are not sophisticated,” she pointed out, “just as the Jews of that time were told by the Greek rulers that our religion was wrong and our traditions were outdated.
“Here in Canada, the First Nations were forced into Residential Schools to learn Canadian ways. The manner in which they were taught in these schools was abusive and horrific. Many children died, and many more were scarred for life.
“As with the Maccabbees,” she continued, “courageous individuals have stood up and fought for rights of their indigenous brothers and sisters. They had to overcome a lot of resistance and other obstacles. Indigenous peoples are still over-represented in the Canadian prison system and social services.
“The story of Chanukah tells us that it is okay to be different from the majority culture,” she said, and “that special and unique traditions are important and worth preserving.
“The story of Chanukah also teaches us that fighting for our rights is not easy,” Ashrafi added. “We may be a tiny minority and the other side may be much more numerous, better organized and equipped. But if we take the first step, like deciding to use that little jar of oil (that burned in the Temple for weight days even though there was only a day’s supply), we will be helped along the way.”
“We put the Menorah in our front window,” she noted, “so that the light is shining into the dark winter nights. We want to share the story of the Chanukah miracle and we want to bring light into a world that has still so much darkness in it.”
Ashrafi’s words were followed by greetings from David Harper, a former Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief who spoke glowingly of his visit to Israel in 2014.
“Our faith teaches us that the People of Israel are the people of the Bible and we must bless them and pray for them,” he said. “My people have a lot to learn from the people of Israel about healing the land.”
Next, Ashrafi introduced Pastor Roger Armbruster whom, she described, as the man behind the vision for the evening. Armbruster, a strong Christian Zionist supporter of Israel, is the founder of Canada Awakening Ministries.
She said of Armbruster that “it is a privilege to be his friend. I have learned so much from you.”
According to Armbruster’s bio on the Canada Awakening Ministries website, “his life has been dedicated to a ministry of reconciliation, and of building bridges between cultures, nations, denominations and generations. He sees cross-cultural reconciliation as a key to making disciples of all nations, and in seeing God’s House become a House of Prayer for all nations.
“As director of Canada Awakening Ministries, he is a leader in facilitating Native-Non-native reconciliation, and in restoring the indigenous peoples of the land to reflect that part of God’s image that He has deposited in them in their sounds, songs, praise and dances.”
Armbruster attended the Inaugural World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People in New Zealand in November 1996 as well as gatherings in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1998, northern Sweden in 2005, and Israel in 2008. In his remarks, he noted that he has visited Israel numerous times over the years – often leading tour groups representing Canadian Inuit, Greenlandic Inuit and Manitoba First Nations at the northern ends of the earth, along with Maori, Fijians and Samoans from the southern ends of the earth – back to the City of Jerusalem from where the original gospel message first came.
“In Israel,” Armbruster said, “these Indigenous People have shared their language, their culture and their faith with both Jewish and Palestinian audiences alike. In one Israeli community, they even shared a message that brought hope to a joint audience of some 500 people that included both Jews and Arabs coming together.”
The dance part of the program was emceed by Isi Masi of Island Breezes. The musical program included several Hawaiian dances, including a rousing foot-stomping number,followed by performances featuring Hawaiian song and gentle movement. The final part of the island dances concluded with a brief Maori war chant.
(The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand.)
The final part of the program included several high octave dances by our own – always outstanding – Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble, with all the performers singing “We Shall Overcome” and the audience invited to join in a round of Israel dancing.
Local News
Israeli-born realtor believes in paying it forward
By MYRON LOVE When Hofit Yanev and her husband, Stefan, first arrived in Winnipeg in May 2013, they knew no one here.
“We were looking for a safer environment in which to raise our children,” she recalls. “We thought that would be Canada, and Winnipeg seemed to be the most welcoming Jewish community.”
Despite not knowing anybody, on their first morning in our community they found that someone had left a challah on their doorstep. That was a small kindness that she has never forgotten. She is a strong believer in paying it forward. Ever since then, she notes, she has made sure to greet newcomers in our community with a challah.
Helping others – whether to buy and sell their homes or manage their money – is a principal focus of the thriving career she has built up here as a real estate agent and insurance adviser.
Sales has always been Hofit Yanev’s strong suit. Originally from Holon (near Tel Aviv), she began her sales career right after her army duty. Her first venture was selling Dead Sea and hair care products. (Some readers may remember the kiosks that used to be set up at some Winnipeg shopping centres some years back.) She worked a year in Chicago and four years in Miami before returning to Israel, where she met and married Stefan.
Soon after settling in Winnipeg, Hofit found work in sales, initially for an HVAC company (while Stefan became a long-distance truck driver and now operates Excellence Fences and Decks). “As I was doing very well in sales for this company,” she recounts, “after taking time following the birth of our third child, I decided to try selling houses.”
She secured her real estate license and went to work. After 18 months of trying, she was still struggling to make a go of it.
“I lacked experience,” she recalls. “I reached a point where I was ready to give up and go back to selling HVAC products.”
However, on what she thought would be her last day, she received two calls that revitalized her hopes. In quick succession, she recounts, she got a call from a former customer who wanted her to sell his house and a new customer who wanted her help in selling his house and buying another.
“I took it as a sign from God,” she says.
Today, eight years later, Yanev, working under the eXp Realty banner, oversees an operation with over 20 agents—nine of whom are on her team and the others working under her in the eXp umbrella.
“I achieved my dream,” she notes, “and I want to help others – either those looking to buy a home or fellow realtors starting out – to realize their dreams as well.”
She notes that she strives to understand what her clients’ needs are and provide the right homes for them. She reports that 70% of her real estate clients are members of our Jewish community. She deals with commercial as well as residential properties and adds that she also helps clients with long- and short-term rentals as well as car rentals.
About a year ago, she notes, she added another entry to her resumé – that of insurance adviser. “As a realtor, I could see how some people are struggling financially,” she says. “I wanted to help.”
As an insurance adviser, she works with single mothers, seniors, and others plagued by financial difficulty. “I advise clients on how to get out of financial trouble, how to save 10% of their net income, and build their savings.”
She makes it clear that she keeps a distinct separation between her real estate clients and her insurance clients.
Now, you would think that an individual working two careers – with five kids to raise (all of whom are enrolled in Jewish educational programs) – would have her hands full. Nonetheless, Yanev has a third avocation – that of a social events planner for fellow Israelis in Winnipeg and other Hebrew speakers.
“For the past six years,” she reports, “I have been producing five programs a year in our community for Hebrew speakers. No one else was doing it, and I felt that it was important for Israelis here to be able to connect with each other.”
She adds that the family-oriented programs have been “super successful.” “We have had as many as 300 people at some of our programs.”
Yanev believes that her success story can inspire other newcomers to Winnipeg. “If you are prepared to work hard, you can achieve your dream,” she says.
She also expresses gratitude to our Jewish community. “We have found the community here to be welcoming and supportive,” she says. “It is thanks to you that we have been successful. This really is friendly Manitoba.”