Local News
Construction of new home of Chesed Shel Emes complete – on time and on budget!
By BERNIE BELLAN It was just over a little over two years ago that the Chesed Shel Emes (the Winnipeg Jewish community’s burial society) launched a capital campaign, with the intent to build “a new facility to meet the needs of the Jewish community for many years to come,” an announcement in the May 10, 2019 issue of this paper said.
That announcement went on to say that the “Chesed Shel Emes’s south building is 114-years-old. It was built in 1905 as a private residence, and was purchased by the newly established Chesed Shel Emes in 1930. The building has met the needs of thousands of families over the years, and is showing its age. The attached chapel, built in 1947, is in good repair and will be a beautiful complement to the new building.
“The new building will provide a better and more comfortable experience for mourners and other visitors,” said Rena Boroditsky, Executive Director of the Chesed Shel Emes. “And for our volunteers, we are designing this new space with safety top of mind.”
“Having an effective and dignified infrastructure to prepare the deceased for burial and to support mourners is something a strong community does for itself.
“The funds raised will be used to: demolish the existing south building; build the new structure; protect the north building during demolition and construction; and furnish the new building with new equipment. The vision is of a building that is handsome, durable, and comforting and that includes state-of-the-art equipment for the care of the deceased. “The new 4,000-square-foot building will include the following features:
“A new, larger tahara room with stainless steel counters and more room for volunteers to perform their work safely (“tahara” is the ritual washing and dressing of a Jewish person in preparation for burial);
“new, state-of-the-art refrigeration units;
“new mechanical lifts for transferring bodies more safely;
“enhanced safety features to improve the experience of volunteers and ensure the dignity of the deceased;
“expanded storage space for caskets, shrouds, and supplies;
“an elevator for guests and volunteers with mobility issues;
“wheelchair access to the building;
“private meeting spaces for mourners, extended family, and friends to gather (currently, mourners use the boardroom);
“more comfortable accommodations for shomrim (“shomrim” are guards who watch over the deceased, so that they are never alone); (When I met with Rena on April 8 this year she added that now that there is quite a comfortable room for “shomrim” to guard over the deceased, she is hoping that family members themselves will partake of the mitzvah of serving as “shomrimr” for the deceased.)
“a safer, more accessible back staircase and entrance way;
“enhanced washroom facilities;
“refurbished office space;
“refurbished basement crawl space for additional storage (the current basement is undeveloped);
“state-of-the-art heating and cooling systems; and other features to create better conditions for mourners, staff, and volunteers, and to ensure the dignity of the deceased.”
Now, in less than one year, the new building is finished – on time and on budget.
According to Rena Boroditsky, the capital campaign, which was under the direction of the Jewish Federation’s former CEO, Bob Freedman, ended up raising $3.25 million.
In our May 13, 2020 issue we noted that, as of that date, there had been 400 individual donors who had contributed a total of $2.8 million. Bob Freedman said at the time: “The capital campaign has raised $2.8 million – that’s pretty darn good. Remember, in a capital campaign we give donors several years to pay off their pledges. In some cases we give three-five years – if it’s a larger pledge. Cash wise we’re doing pretty well. One of the reasons we’re starting (work on the demolition of the old house and eventually construction) is we have money to pay the contractor going forward – so it’s not just pledges. Close to half the pledges have already been redeemed.”
Fast forward to April 8, 2021 and, in a conversation with Rena Boroditsky, she told me that in the end there were 800 donors to the capital campaign. As well, the City of Winnipeg contributed $25,000 toward the construction of an elevator in the new building.
As Rena said, “For us to make a plan, raise the money and build it on time is quite an accomplishment.” (What is even more remarkable is that the City of Winnipeg has actually already given the Chesed an occupancy permit! For anyone who has dealt with the city on occupancy permits, that in itself is a minor miracle!)
Rena paid special tribute to Akman Construction for the speed and efficiency with which both the demolition of the old house that had served as the prior home of the Chesed was demolished and the construction of the new building was accomplished.
“We still have to buy some furniture,“ Rena noted, but the move back into the new home of the Chesed from what had been a temporary relocation to Chapel Lawn Funeral Home is proceeding rapidly. (Rena showed me her desk, which is situated for the time being in the middle of the floor in the Chesed chape, saying that she can hardly wait to move into her new office.)
As I toured the new building with Rena, she proudly showed me all the enhancements that will make the new Chesed something about which the entire community can be proud. Most notable perhaps is the additions of three – count ‘em, three washrooms! (No more waiting around to use a washroom before driving out to one of the cemeteries.)
Then, in one room that we entered, Rena said: “Here’s a surprise” – and she opened a special compartment housing the old safe that is a relic going back almost 100 years.
When I spoke with Bob Freedman last May, he explained what the safe is all about:
Bob: “Bernie, have you seen the safe? It must weigh 500 pounds.”
“So, what’s in the safe?” I asked.
“Not cash, unfortunately. When I first opened the doors, I opened a bunch of little books. People who passed away were recorded – by pencil or pen, by name – their Hebrew name, the date they died. So I looked up my mum, I looked up my dad. It’s really a history of the Jewish community. There was a big picture of the machers from the 1930s – all men, of course. There was a big picture of the ladies’ auxiliary – all looking very stern.
Bob added this observation: “By the way, if those men knew that the place was being run by a woman, they’d all be spinning in their graves.
“When you ask someone how do you define a Jewish community, as opposed to a community with Jews living in it, there are three things: A shul, a school, and a chevra kadisha – a burial society.
“Burial is one of the first things people thought about when they came from the old country. They looked for a place to bury people.”
Once the Chesed is fully functioning, Rena told me on April 8, it can be expected to handle between 115-140 deceased in a year. Last year was an especially bad one for deaths in our community, with 140 deaths recorded to the end of November – which is the end of the Chesed’s fiscal year, Rena noted. December – February was an even more brutal period for the number of Jewish deaths, she observed, with 68 deaths in those three months alone. (That number seems to have finally tapered off, thank God.)
And, while the Chesed serves as the home for Winnipeg’s Jewish community’s burial society (except for Temple Shalom’s own “chevra kadisha”, known as “Mikdash Shalom”, which is located at Chapel Lawn Funeral Home), very few funeral services actually take place in the Chesed chapel itself.
“Typically, we’ve only had about 30 funeral services a year held in the chapel here,” Rena noted. “But now that we have the new building, with a handicap ramp for the first time and three washrooms, once pallbearers are allowed to come back and funerals can once again allow guests to attend, we expect that there will be more funerals held at the Chesed itself,” Rena said.
She added that, as more and more members of the community remain unaffiliated with a synagogue, Rena anticipates an even greater use of the Chesed Shel Emes.
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.
Local News
Third annual JFest Winnipeg will be offering programs for all ages
By MYRON LOVE JFest Winnipeg is back with a good variety of musical performances, a book launch, popular Jewish-themed films, children’s activities, and a family-oriented Shabbat dinner.
“JFest,” observes Laura Marjovsky, the Rady JCC Director of Programming, “is an opportunity for our community to experience Jewish art and culture. With our range of JFest events, we are trying to reach out beyond what has been our base audience and appeal to all ages. We have a commitment to bring top notch Israeli performers to share the highest caliber of Israeli entertainment with our audiences.”
The week-long festival (November 14-21) kicks off with a performance by top-ranked Israeli singer-songwriter Harel Skaat. The popular Israeli star began singing as a child. He shot to fame when he finished second in the second season of “Kochav Nolad” – Israel’s version of “American Idol.” His first album was released in 2006 and achieved Platinum status – with one of the songs being ranked as “song of the year.” He followed that up in 2009 with a second album that reached Gold status. In 2010, he represented Israel at the Eurovision competition.
Skaat’s performance is scheduled for the Seven Oaks Performing Arts Centre (which is attached to Garden City Collegiate) beginning at 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 14. Patrons will have the opportunity to purchase an enhanced ticket to attend a meet and greet with Harel.
All other JFest programs and activities will be at the Rady JCC.
Music Producer Karla Berbrayer says Ben Caplan’s performance on Saturday, November 21 will also be another highlight. “Ben Caplan redefines what it means to be a modern folk artist,” Berbrayer says. “His music and stories are matched by his larger-than-life stage presence. This concert focuses on how his Jewish upbringing has influenced his entire performance career.”
“Flatland Famous” is returning by popular demand. This quintet, known for its performances at Winnipeg Jets games, will be presenting its concert, “Jewish Soul of Rock and Roll,” on Wednesday, November 18, at 7:30 pm. This year’s show will feature songs by Amy Winehouse, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Simon and Garfinkel, and other famous Jewish icons.
On Tuesday, November 17, local author Deborah Schnitzer will be taking centre stage with the launch of her new book, “The Woman Who Swallowed West Hawk Lake.” The University of Winnipeg English Professor Emeritus’s new novel explores intergenerational trauma related to Nazi breeding programs. Joining Schnitzer on stage will be a panel of professionals who have experience working with children who have experienced trauma.
And of course, “Best of the Fest” is back. Films to be presented will include“The Floaters” and “We Met at Grossingers,” two wildly popular movies at last spring’s Winnipeg International Jewish Film Festival.
“The Floaters,” to be screened on Monday , November 16 at 7:00 pm is a funny and bang-on depiction of Jewish summer camp culture.
“We Met at Grossingers” is a loving look back at the Borscht Belt in New York’s Catskills, where generations of young Jewish performers earned their dues and developed their acts. The film will be screened on Thursday, November 19 at 7:00 P.M.
On Friday November 20, JFest will host a Family Shabbat dinner featuring Anat Kriger, an Israeli-born, Toronto-based musician, actor, and children’s performer, who has made several appearances in Winnipeg at major communal events.
Kidfest on Sunday, November 15, will be a day-long potpourri of programming that will include live performances, workshops, bouncy castles, games and crafts, and much more.
Readers seeking more information about JFest can contact Laura Marjovsky at 204 477-7539 or lmarjovsky@radyjcc/com
