By MYRON LOVE For regular readers of my articles in The Jewish Post & News over the years, Kelly Robinson’s name is most likely associated with the growing number of students she has taught who who have stood out from year to year at the annual Winnipeg Music Festival in March. 
“I teach voice lessons,” says Robinson.  “I’m grateful to have such a full studio — over 50 students each week — and it’s delightful to see each student progress and grow their confidence and ability. Many of my former (and some current) students perform professionally themselves. It’s lovely to see.”
The teacher, moreoverr, is also a performer on local stages and behind the scenes. In recent years, she has appeared on stage in performances with the Manitoba Opera Chorus and the Manitoba Underground Opera, Rainbow Stage, Little Opera Company, Dry Cold Productions, and the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.  In August, she notes, she sang the role of “Mother” in the opera “Hansel and Gretel” with Manitoba Underground Opera at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.  Most recently, she was Music Director for the Manitoba Theatre for Young Peoples  “A Year With Frog and Toad” in December. 
 Currently, she reports, in a real tour de force, she in playing a role on the production team in the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s new production of the musical version of the movie “Waitress” (which starts January 7 and runs until February 1) behind the scenes and she will also be appearing on stage.  “I am the Assistant Music Director,” she says.  “I worked on the music with the singers in rehearsal to help everyone to sound their best. I played the piano for rehearsals.  I am playing keyboard in the orchestra for all of the performances.”
 In addition, the “Waitress” band is on stage, interacting with the cast. “That should be a lot of fun,” she comments.
For the daughter of Terry and Freda, a musical career was not on her radar growing up largely in River Heights.  The graduate of the Hebrew bilingual program at Sir William Osler School (which lately was transferred to Brock Corydon School) told Winnipeg Fee Press opera reviewer Holly Harris in an interview that appeared The Jewish Post & News in 2017 that her original career goal was to become a dentist.
She was introduced to musical theatre by her drama teacher at Grant Park High School, who encouraged her to audition for that year’s production of “All About Cats”.  To her surprise, she was cast in a lead role.
Despite this early introduction to the world of musical theatre, Robinson was still largely fixated on a career in the sciences.
In university, she pursued a four-year degree in microbiology at the University of Manitoba – and excelled.  Toward the end of her science program, she recounted to Holly Harris and, despite being awarded full academic scholarships and the prospect of her own prestigious research lab, Robinson realized that her true love was music. She changed course and auditioned for the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Music.
She did earn her B.Sc. – but she also completed a music degree with a major in Classical Voice Performance and a minor in Composition.
“It was really neat,” she told Harris – about composing music for a string quartet.  “Hearing it performed was inspiring. I realized that, in music, there were endless possibilities.”
She furthered her musical education with studies in contemporary vocal styles through Boston’s Berklee College of Music. (Coincidentally, her husband, Josh Eskin, whom she met while both were teaching at a St. Boniface music school, studied guitar at that same institution.)
As a singer, Kelly Robinson has demonstrated a remarkable versatility. In addition to opera and musical theatre, she has done Gilbert and Sullivan – winning the Winnipeg Music Festival’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society Trophy in 2002, a tribute to her Zaida, Harold King. She has fond memories of him singing songs from Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” to her when she was young.
Outside of music, Robinson enjoys crocheting, making jewelry, reading and spending time with Josh and their children – 15-year-old Juliet – also a Winnipeg Music Festival winner – and 11-year-old Dylan.
She is also the High Holy Day Choir Director at Congregation Etz Chayim.
After “Waitress”, Robinson reports, her next project will be serving as Music Director for Dry Cold’s production of “Dogfight,” scheduled for April. The musical – based on the 1991 film of the same name – revolves around another waitress and her encounter with three GIs about to be shipped out to Vietnam in the early days of the war – and the day before the assassination of President Kennedy.  
According to the blurb from the theatre company, “ ‘Dogfight’ deals frankly with serious and important subjects that are still relevant in our fractious times of political instability, cyber bullying & intolerance of others”.
It sounds like another winner from the local musical theatre company that focuses on premiering the latest new musicals.

By MYRON LOVE On December 24, Sol Fink, who both as shoichet and chazan served our community for many years, celebrated his 100thbirthday. In keeping with his low key approach to life, Fink commemorated the occasion only with those closest to him – his wife, Rachel, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, as well as his last remaining sibling, Ruth Zimmer.
Sol Fink is a man who is infused with a sense of gratitude for his long life, his family and Canada – his adopted home which welcomed him, his three sisters and his  parents after their experiences in the Holocaust. 
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Fink and his sisters is that he is now the third of the siblings to have turned 100.  His older sisters, Sally Singer and Ann Novak, had previously passed the 100-year milestone – and Ruth is not far behind.
The four Fink siblings were the world’s oldest siblings to have survived the Holocaust.
The Fink family was among the lucky ones – although they wouldn’t have considered themselves “lucky” that day in 1940 when they, along with other Polish Jews who had moved to the Russian-controlled eastern half of Poland (as compared to those who were already living in the area) were forced by the Russians into rail cars and shipped off to Siberia. 
The Fink siblings. the children of Shaindel and Zecharia Fink, grew up in the town of Sanok in southeastern Poland, where Zecharia Fink worked as a kosher butcher.  In the early days of the Nazi invasion the family relocated across the San River to Shaindel’s parents’ home.  
Sol and his sisters did have a younger brother, Eli. Sadly, when the rest of the family wasa about to board the train, the little boy ran back to stay with his grandparents.  He perished in the Holocaust, along with 80 other members of the family.
Three years ago, Sol’s niece, Carol Sevitt, published a story in the Canadian Jewish News chronicling the siblings’ life’s journey.  A year later, Anne’s son, filmmaker Allan Novak, created a documentary which was shown at the Berney Theatre – among other venues in North America and Poland.
The family spent a year in a prison camp in Siberia.  After the Nazis attacked Russia the Fink family was freed, but had to remain in Siberia for the duration of the war.  After the war the family ended up in Germany.          `
“We had an aunt and uncle, Clara and Jack Linhart, who were living in Winnipeg and they brought us here,” Sol Fink says.

 That was in 1948.
Fink’s first job in Winnipeg was working for a construction company putting down hardwood flooring – an occupation suited to his ability to fix anything.  In Siberia, he had been a blacksmith.
What he remembers about this first job was sitting on the roof of the housing he happened to be working on, savouring  a big bun stuffed with perogies, which he would wash down with a quart of chocolate milk. He spent every second of that precious half hour enjoying the luscious foods he had been denied for six years in Siberia.
“We were always hungry in Siberia,” he recalls.  “To this day, I still love the taste of bread.”
After a short stint in construction, Fink took his handyman skills to work for Adelman Furniture (which later became Penthouse Furniture).  “I was doing repairs and servicing,” Fink remembers.  “I was given a company truck to drive and went all over the city.”  
In the mid-1950s, Fink went into business with his brother-in-law, Morris Singer.  They purchased a corner grocery called Lloyd’s on Sargent and Langside. Later, they operated a store on Inkster and McPhilips.  
It was while operating Lloyd’s Grocery that Sol Fink was introduced to the love of his life. “George Rubenfeld had come to work for us,” Fink recalls.  “One day, he tells me that his sister is arriving from France.  He said that she was beautiful and brilliant and wanted me to meet her. He invited me to Shabbat supper with the family.”
Fink was smitten with Rachel Rubenfeld.  After a short courtship, he proposed to her one evening at St. John’s Park.  She said that she couldn’t marry him because she had to look after her parents.  His response – “we will look after them together.”
He was true to his word. After his father-in-law passed away in 1971, his mother-in-law came to live with Sol and Rachel and spent the last 22 years of her life with them.
He was equally solicitous of his own parents.  
It was only after retiring in 1985 that Sol Fink began his second career as a chazan, Torah reader and shoichet. In an earlier interview with The Post, five years ago, Fink said that he became a chazan “out of necessity”. 
“The chazan at the Bnay Abraham Synagogue had just quit,” he recounted.  Rabbi Weizman and the president asked me if I could come to shul on Shabbats to help out.”
When, shortly after, they asked him to lead Yom Tov services, he remembers being unsure whether he could do it. “I went to ask my uncle, Moshe Langsan, his opinion.  He knew the niggunim.  He listened to my davening and encouraged me to take up the challenge.”
Rabbi Weizman also encouraged his new chazan to become the Torah reader for the Shul.
Around the same time, the community’s shoichet quit and moved to Toronto.  “My brother-in-law, Morris, suggested to the rabbi that I might be a suitable replacement,” Fink recalled.  “In the grocery store, we sold a lot of meat.”
 
Fink remembered being really disturbed by the scene at the slaughterhouse the first time that he went with Rabbi Weizman.   He wasn’t sure that he wanted to go back.
“Rabbi Weizman encouraged me to come back with him and help out,” he says. “After three or four days, I was used to it.”
Fink and his partner, the late Shlomo Benarroch, worked as the community’s shoichetim for 20 years – usually going out one day a week to the slaughterhouse in Carman– until the community stopped schechitah about 20 years ago.
After the Bnay Abraham merged with two other Conservative congregations (the Beth Israel and the Rosh Pina) in north Winnipeg in 2002, Fink moved to the Chavurat Tefila.  For a number of years, he led Yom Tov and Shabbat services and was one of the regular Torah readers on Shabbat at the small congregation.  About fourteen years ago, he and Rachel sold their north Winnipeg home and moved into a condo in south Winnipeg.  Despite living south, he continued to lead Yom Tov services at the Chavurat Tefila. (Over Yom Tov, he and Rachel used to stay with his sisters (whom he always called “the maidlach”) who lived nearby.
The last Yom Tov service that he led at the north end shul was just six years ago when – at the age of 93 – he had the pleasure of leading the services with his grandson, Avi Fink-Posen.
When leading services, Sol Fink always tried to daven with kavanah. “I was always aware that I was praying to Hashem for the congregation and the Jewish People as a whole,” he says. 

As a father and grandfather, if you ask Sol’s children or grandchildren their opinion of him, they will tell you that he is the most loving, positive, caring, honest and hard-working person they know. What you see is what you get.
 At the age of 100, Sol Fink is still hale and hearty and he and Rachel still look much younger than they are. Up until a couple of years ago, Fink was still swimming every day at the Rady JCC.  Fink looks at least 20 years younger than he is.  He and Rachel still keep fit exercising daily at home and Rachel makes sure they eat healthily. And he still puts on tefillin and davens every morning. 
As the saying goes – may they both live to 120!

By MYRON LOVE This past November,  a pair of internationally renowned University of Manitoba professors received further  recognition for their storied careers.
 In early November, Dr. Michael  Eskin, chazan, singer/songwriter and Distinguished Professor in the University of Manitoba’s Department of Food  and Nutritional Sciences, was inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. 
In June of 2023, he was inducted into the Manitoba Agricultural Hall of Fame. He is also a member of the Order of Canada, the Order of Manitoba and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Toward the end of the month, Dr. Haskel Greenfield, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Manitoba, co-director (with his wife, Professor Tina Greenfield) of the university’s Near Eastern and Biblical Archaeology Lab, and head of the University’s Judaic Studies program, became just the third Canadian to be invited to become a member of the prestigious Academia Europea, the Pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences, which was founded in 1988 with the goal of  “advancing and propagating  excellence in scholarship in the humanities, law, the economic, social, and political sciences, mathematics, medicine, and all branches of natural and technological sciences anywhere in the world for the public benefit and for the advancement of the education of the public of all ages in the aforesaid subjects in Europe”.
 
Greenfield was welcomed into Academia Europea at the organization’s annual yearly conference which, this year, was held from November 26-28 at Wroclaw in Poland.  He was one of close to 100 new inductees – among well over 1,000 Academia Europea members in attendance.
“There were numerous presentations for members, both old and new, talking about their research,” he reports, “ a lot of it cutting edge material.”
He is looking forward to next year’s conference – which is scheduled for Barcelona.
Greenfield joined the teaching staff at the University of Manitoba in 1989.  As noted in an earlier article in the Jewish Post & News, his introduction to archeology came in 1973 when he was involved as a student at an excavation at Tel Gezer in Israel. Following this, he conducted archaeological work in the Balkans, Romania and Greece – work that was cut short when conflict broke out in the region in 1992.  Subsequently, his research took him to South Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Egypt and Israel,
Rather than focusing on a specific region in his studies, Greenfield noted in that previous interview, he has always pursued “the big picture” – how we have come to be who we are today from our earliest origins to growing our own food, domesticating animals, developing towns and cities and adapting new technology.
One of his special interests, he said, has been researching the beginnings of metallurgy and its effects on daily life.  His other major interest is in the evolution of domestic animals and how they have changed the way in which we live and feed ourselves.
 
 In recent years, his work has been mainly focused on archaeological sites In Turkey and Israel.  From 2008 to 2017, he co-directed excavation work at and analyzed findings from Tel es Safi – in ancient times known as Gath (the Philistine city that was the home of Goliath who fought David nearby)– between Ashdod and Beth Shemesh.  He has also analyzed material from other sites in Israel (such as Tel Beth Shemesh and Tel Shiloh) as well as in Turkey, where he worked on a site in west central Turkey called Catalhoyuk, a site that was first settled about 9,500 years ago.
Now that he has reached 71, he says that his days of leading excavations into the past are behind him. He is not entirely abandoning field work though. Rather, while still finishing reports from his past research, he notes that he will be providing his analytical expertise to other professionals’ excavations.
“There is still a demand for my areas of expertise,” he says.
Currently, he reports, he is analyzing material from a Hebrew University archaeological team at the famous archaeological site of Tel Beit Mirsim, which was excavated 100 years ago by the father of Biblical Archaeology, William Foxwell Albright. He is also providing assistance to a Hebrew University archaeological team helping to analyze findings from a site of the Biblical town of Shiloh, where the Ark was temporarily housed after Joshua led the people of Israel into the Promised Land.
 
Michael Eskin’s induction into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of fame came via Zoom in early November.  As a recipient, his portrait hangs in a special gallery which can be  accessed online, together with a 4-minute video.
In a congratulatory letter from Senator Robert Black, Chair of the Senate committee on Agriculture and Forestry, the senator commented on Eskin’s pioneering research on canola oil and its impact on Canada’s agricultural industry and the health of consumers. Black noted, “Your work has not only improved the quality and stability of canola oil, but also expanded its market on an international scale.
“Your efforts in establishing canola oil as a heart-healthy addition to the Canadian diet have had far reaching benefits for producers, the economy and consumers.”
Black furthered praised Eskin for his role in mentoring the next generation of researchers and industry leaders.
During the course of his career, Eskin has published 19 books, over 250 research articles, book chapters, monographs and abstracts.
 In an earlier interview, Eskin – who also served our Jewish community as a chazan for many years, quoted his late mother-in-law as saying that “you should never retire.” She was right, Eskin observed. “If I had retired at 65, I am not sure if I would have accomplished all that I have.”