Local News
Cathy Moser and Jeff Itzkow launch campaign to raise money in support of pioneering Israeli treatment using psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD
By MYRON LOVE Psychologist Dr. Cathy Moser and her husband, Jeff Itzkow, a healthcare policy analyst, are leading a campaign to raise money for the Jerusalem Foundation’s new Resilience Centre in Israel’s capital. Aided in fundraising by longtime friends Donna Weinstein and Gina Chodirker, the Winnipeg couple is pledging to double every dollar donated to the Centre up to $100,000.
According to the Jerusalem Foundation, estimates suggest that over half a million Israelis are suffering from PTSD as well as other psychological issues since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and ensuing wars.
“It is not only Israeli soldiers who have been traumatized,” Moser observes. “Everybody in Israel knows someone who was affected by the attack on October 7. This past year has triggered trauma from past wars as well as intergenerational trauma from the Holocaust.
In response to this tsunami of trauma that has hit Israelis, soon after the October attack the Jerusalem Foundation founded the Resilience Centre – operating out of the Shaare Zedek Hospital. The Resilience Centre utilizes a range of treatments for trauma therapy – including the pioneering use of the psychedelic drug ketamine.
Cathy Moser has been treating patients for the past 40 years. During that time, she says, she has treated victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and other horrific life events. Conventional tools and treatments can successfully treat trauma, but some (traumas)are so barbaric and complex that no matter how skilled a clinician is, we cannot restore one’s “lifeforce,” she points out.
“In the last few years, I have dedicated myself to learning how to treat the most severe cases of PTSD,” she reports. “I have learned that there are excellent outcomes with the use of psychedelic drug treatment, and the research in this area is flourishing.”
She points out that people affected by PTSD are typically unable to change the faulty thought patterns caused by witnessing and being impacted by trauma. “While years of Cognitive Behaviour and other therapies can ameliorate the condition, it remains a vulnerability factor forever. The psychedelic medicines enable people to let go of the shame and blame that they feel and see the ‘bigger picture’, and their own behaviour in a more rational fashion.”
She says that she first became aware of the potential for using psychedelic drugs in treating PTSD patients last year when she heard an interview with a cancer patient by the name of Janis Hughes talking about using psilocybin (aka magic mushrooms) to treat her existential anxiety about dying from cancer.
“She said that she had been diagnosed for terminal cancer, given 6 months to live, and couldn’t stop crying for the first 3 months,” Moser reports. “She had heard that Psilocybin would help, but there was no one to treat her in Winnipeg. I thought to myself: ‘I can do the training; and pray that it won’t be too late for Janis.’ It turned out that someone who does this kind of work (outside of Health Canada) heard her on the radio and helped her. I had the honor of meeting Janis half a year after her diagnosed death prognosis, and she is happily working as an advocate for legalizing psychedelics for therapy. “
Moser subsequently trained with Therapsil, a non-profit organization dedicated to accessing psychedelic medicine and Ppsychotherapy for Canadians.
In her continuing efforts to make a difference, Moser reports, she connected with the Jerusalem Resilience Center. “I spent time with the team in Israel this past summer and witnessed their treatment efficacy There are less than a handful of legal psychedelic treatment centers in Israel, and this is a main one.”
At the Jerusalem Resilience Center, she met Dr. Sinai Oren, the director, and his team in August. “The staff psychologist had been treating one patient who was a tank operator whose brigade experienced an unexpected attack,” she recounts. “Tanks have a manually activated deflection device for protection. Tragically, a decision to move forward occurred seconds before the deflection device was fully engaged, and the tank was blown up. Most of his friends were killed, and he was injured.
“All the therapy in the world was not going to help this guy forgive himself because, under these circumstances, there is a default network that won’t allow the brain to see the situation objectively. All of the sights and sounds and smells associated with the experience will forever trigger feelings of helplessness, inadequacy, shame and pain that were felt at that moment.
“While conventional therapies will help the individual see the triggers coming and lessen the intensity of responses. the tendency is to regress under challenging life circumstances. Hopefully, using ketamine can make a difference for this individual.”
The response to Cathy and Jeff’s appeal has been pretty good, Cathy says. “We have already raised about $40,000 from the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation from Vancouver, ” she reports.
She is encouraging readers to donate what they can – no matter whether it’s $18 or $180 or $1,800. The Jerusalem Foundation can send out Tribute cards for special occasions, or you can send a note of support to friends and family in Israel. She is also offering to send any donor who is interested two CDs that she produced to help her clients, friends and family overcome stress and anxiety. One CD is about stress management; the other is about overcoming anxiety. (email cathy.g.moser@gmail.com to request the link to receiving the CDs).
“I know that many of us have lost our core sense of well being,” she observes. “If you find yourself stressed out or overly anxious by what is going on in the world, it is important to engage in these types of self-care practices.”
Readers who want to make a donation to the Jerusalem Resilience Center can go online and type in https://jerusalemfoundation.org/ hit DONATE – and in the box that asks that for the project to which you would like to donate, specify the Jerusalem Resilience Centre.
Local News
Application filed by two former members of Etz Chayim Congregation against the congregation to have their memberships restored dismissed by judge
The following is taken from the Canadian Jewish News website: “Manitoba’s Court of King’s Bench has dismissed Hadass Eviatar and David Hoult’s application challenging the termination of their membership at Congregation Etz Chayim. In his decision, Justice Vic Toews noted that, although Hoult’s letter describing a hypothetical attack on the synagogue may have lacked sensitivity given the political climate, he did not intend to threaten violence against congregants. However, the judge ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction to intervene in the membership dispute under Manitoba’s Corporations Act, finding that the couple had no financial, proprietary or economic interest that would entitle them to the remedies they sought. The judge concluded that religious organizations are generally free to determine their own membership rules and ordered each side to bear its own legal costs.”
If you would like to read the original article that broke the story about the battle between Hadaass Eviatar and David Hoult with Etz Chayim Congregation you can go to Epic Court Battle.”
Local News
Jewish Federation now says Jewish population of Winnipeg in 2021 (according to the census) was 13,940 – not the 16,000 figure that the Federation had been touting for years
By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted Oct. 27, 2026) Longtime readers of The Jewish Post & News (and this website) would probably know that I have long had a very strong interest in establishing as accurate figures as possible when it has come to reporting the size of Winnipeg’s Jewish community.
For years I argued that our Jewish Federation was exaggerating the size of our Jewish population. I heard the figure of 16,000 bandied about by leaders in our community quite often when it came to reporting the size of our Jewish population – without any empirical evidence to back that figure up.
I had long maintained that the only reasonably accurate figures when it came to reporting the size of Winnipeg’s Jewish population were those produced by the late Evelyn Katz, when she was the unofficial demographer for the Jewish Federation – over 30 years ago. What Evelyn would do is keep careful track of births, deaths, numbers of newcomers but, perhaps most important: the number of people who had left our community.
Thus, in August 2022 when I interviewed Faye Rosenberg Cohen who, at the time, was just about to retire as the Jewish Federation’s Chief Planning and Allocations Officer, I was somewhat astonished to hear Faye say, when I asked her what proportion of our Jewish community was made up of immigrants, she answered that “I can honestly say when I look at those numbers it’s somewhere around 1/3 of the community.”
In response, I asked: “So you’d say it’s somewhere between 4-5,000?”
Faye said: “I think it’s more than that.”
I wrote in that article, “I indicated my skepticism at that time, saying ‘You know that I’ve always been skeptical about the numbers that have been used by the Federation for the population of the Jewish community. I think though that it’s always been more of a case of identification – who identifies as Jewish.’ ”
Later, after the results of the 2021 census were released, I wrote that “if you take into account the results of the 2021 census, the Jewish community cannot be larger than 14,270 at a maximum. But that figure would also include anyone who had either said either their ethnic origin was Jewish or their religion was Jewish.”
Since many of the individuals who had said on the 2021 census that their ethnic origin was Jewish, but their religion was something else, I maintained that ascertaining the real size of our Jewish community was highly problematic.
Still, for the sake of argument I was willing to accept that, realistically, it was somewhere between 13,000-14,000 – but nowhere close to the figure of 16,000 that had come to be suggested by our then president of the Jewish Federation or by other leading figures in our community.
So, it was with a sense of satisfaction that I heard Sharon Graham, who is now the Jewish Federation’s Community Planning and Allocations Lead say to an audience of over 50 people who were at the Gwen Secter Centre on Thursday, October 22, that the Jewish community in 2021 was – at a maximum: 13,940.
Sharon was at the Gwen Secter Centre to speak to Remis Lecture attendees. Her presentation preceded a presentation by Jewish Federation CEO Jeff Lieberman. Sharon used a PowerPoint presentation to provide some very interesting insights into where our Jewish community was at in 2021- and I’m offering some parts of her presentation here for you to read because I thought they were so interesting.
I had actually made many of the same observations about the results of the 2021 census in my own reporting back in 2022, but seeing what I had written confirmed by the Jewish Federation’s point person on planning told me that Sharon has a much more realistic view of our community than did Faye Rosenberg Cohen.
Here, for instance, is a slide that shows the proportion of our Jewish community that is made up of immigrants. It’s slightly under one fifth, not the one third percentage that Faye had suggested.
But, what really set Sharon’s presentation apart from anything else I’ve ever seen presented by someone from the Jewish Federation – other than the aforementioned Evelyn Katz, was the slide she projected which showed that, while there had been a large influx of newcomers to Winnipeg’s Jewish community between 2016-2021 there had also been a significantly high number of people who had left our Jewish community in those same years, as you can see in the following slide:
That is something we just don’t hear discussed by leaders of our Jewish organizations, but let’s be realistic: For many newcomers who came to Winnipeg and were counted as new members of our Jewish community, Winnipeg – for a variety of reasons, was a stepping stone to other communities. It may have been for reasons of better job opportunities, moving closer to other family members, or – the reason that we hear so often when it comes to people saying they want to leave Winnipeg: the weather.
But, whatever the reason, Sharon’s figures show that, as much as GrowWinnipeg may have been an abiding success when it’s come to attracting newcomers to our Jewish community here, getting them to stay long term is a different story.
And, while there were other aspects of Sharon’s presentation that certainly merit discussion, especially the figures she produced about intermarriage, rather than delving into them here, I thought it useful simply to insert them for you, the reader, to see – and draw your own conclusions.
Local News
Marty Green expands his protest against extremist Jewish settlers to two more venues – and is arrested twice more
(Tuesday, October 27) We received the following press release about Marty Green being arrested again, both at the University of Manitoba and at Shaarey Zedek Synagogue:
Both sides came to blows on Saturday, October 24, at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue as security personnel sought to prevent Marty Green from interfering with synagogue traffic as he protested just outside synagogue grounds against the actions of religious settlers in Israel’s occupied West Bank territory. Synagogue Executive Director Rena Secter Elbaze quickly intervened to prevent further escalation. Police arrived shorty thereafter and detained Green for 45 minutes before driving him home and releasing him. It is not clear whether their decision not to lay charges was the result of their own onsite investigation or whether it was at the request of the synagogue executive.
Green has now been arrested four times in the last month and faces multiple charges for disturbing the peace, including two episodes at the Asper Campus and one more this past Friday (Oct. 23) at the University of Manitoba. While Green says initially he was merely handing out leaflets (at the Asper Campus), since his first arrest on September 23, he has returned to the campus with a large placard and an acccordion, accompanying himself while singing songs with lyrics that include such phrases as “The Jews Are Bananas….B-A-N-A-N-A-S”. In addition to listing actions of the religious settlers as including arson, vandalism, and theft, he pointedly alleges that the IDF has been backing up the settlers in their actions.
Green had earlier notified the Shaarey Zedek that he was contemplating bringing his protest to the synagogue. He was told that if he attempted to enter the grounds he would be prevented from doing so. At that time, Secter Elbaze told Green that his intentions were inappropriate, declaring the synagogue to be “a house of worship dedicated to prayer, learning, community, and spiritual engagement.” Green responded that if the synagogue were willing to contact the Crown and inform them that “that there was never any legal basis for their claims that I was conducting myself inappropriately at the Asper Campus” (with regard to his earlier arrests) that he would “voluntarily refrain from carrying his informational campaign to the synagogue(s).”
Green further argues that the recent “psak” (religious ruling) by leading Israeli rabbi Rov Dov Lior, in which Lior declares that it is not merely permissible but praiseworthy for Jews to steal olives from Arab orchards….that this ruling brings his protest within the proper realm of religious discourse. He says further that if the local rabbis were willing to speak out to their congregations against the aforesaid psak, that he might have refrained from taking his campaign to their grounds.
Although Green was released on Saturday without charges, police confiscated his placard. They explained that it was being held as evidence pending an investigation by Major Crimes as to whether it constituted hate literature.
There was no further information given as to what happened at the University of Manitoba.
