By MYRON LOVE “Winnipeg is a much better city now than when I first came here,” observes Howard Kideckel.  “In truth, it was rather depressing.  But now, there is a lot more going on and the community is much more diverse.”
The former Torontonian who moved here close to 40 years ago is one of those who has made our community better by his presence – and our community has been the richer for it.  On September 26, our community is expressing its gratitude to Kideckel – and not for the first time.   This year,  Kideckel is the Gwen Secter Creative Retirement Centre’s honoree for one of  our Jewish Federation’s annual Kavod Awards – to be presented at the newly-reopened and expanded Shaarey Zedek Synagogue.  This will be Kideckel’s scond Kavod Award. He was previously nominated by the Federation.
There are few Jewish community institutions which have not benefitted from this quintessential community volunteer’s involvement and leadership.   Take Etz Chayim for example. He has been an active member almost from the moment he came to Winnipeg – including serving a term as president.
At Gwen Secter, he is the treasurer.
He is on the Federation Planning Committee and canvasses for the CJA. 
He is treasurer of Limmud Winnipeg and played a key role in the organization receiving its charitable registration.
He is a regular attendee at the shul at the beach in the summer months. 
And he has served on the board of the Chesed Shel Emes.  In fact, almost anyone who has attended funerals at any of our community’s four main cemeteries will have come across Howard Kideckel.  He would have most likely been one of the volunteer  pallbearers.
As far back as he can remember, Kideckel has always been involved in the Jewish community.  As he wrote in his entry in the Jewish Foundation’s Endowment Book of Life, the grandson of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from what is now PoIand and Latvia grew up in downtown Toronto. The high school that he attended – although once 95% Jewish – was still about 30% Jewish when he was in Grade 10.  From the time he was six, he was a regular visitor to the neighbourhood YMHA .  He attended Jewish summer camps and, as a young adult, joined a B’nai Brith chapter.
At the University in Toronto, he was active in Hillel – which is how he met his wife-to-be, the former Hope Jeroff, who was originally from Winnipeg. (Howard and Hope remain on friendly terms althugh they have long since divorced.) 

At university, he earned a BA Honours degree in history and political science and first thought that he would try teaching.  “I quickly learned that there was little demand for history teachers, so I switched to accounting,” he recalls.
After completing his honours degree in history and political science, Kideckel entered the Faculty of Education and received a teaching degree in business education. He taught accounting and law at university for a couple of years before he and Hope decided to move back (for Hope) to Winnipeg.
“We felt that Winnipeg would be more conducive to raising children and slowing down our hectic pace,” he says.  “While I didn’t know that much about Winnipeg,” he continues, “I did know the reputation of Winnipeg’s north end as it was very reminiscent of the Toronto area that I grew up in. One of my terms for moving to Winnipeg was to live in the ‘north end,’ so we moved to the extended north end, and I have never regretted it. The feelings of a warm Jewish community emanated from this end of town. I could never get enough of Selkirk Avenue and all the other streets that serve as a shrine to immigrant Jewish culture. I found Winnipeg to be a very cosmopolitan and compassionate community. The friendliness of the population, as well as their desire to have quality in their education and cultural facilities was, and still is, very uplifting.”

In Winnipeg, Kideckel went to work as an internal auditor for the Province of Manitoba.  He worked for the province for 32 years before  retiring 14 years ago.
“It was a great job,” he recalls.  “I got to travel all over Manitoba.”
Once in Winnipeg, Kideckel quickly picked up where he left off in  Toronto when it came to Jewish community involvement.  He joined B’nai Brith and the former Rosh Pina Synagogue (which became Etz Chayim after the merger of the three largest north end congregations in 2001.)
He quickly became an integral part of his new community.
 
“I have always had a strong commitment to Judaism and I devote virtually all my volunteer time to Jewish organizations,” he wrote in his Endowment Book of Life entry.  “I understand how important it is that our community has sufficient resources to enable it to meet its obligations in the future. These resources are not only financial but also human in the form of volunteering. Winnipeg is probably the best city in Canada when it comes to people volunteering their time so that those not as fortunate can be serviced.”
Adds the father of two (David and Brent) and zaida of three, “We have good people here, but we are always in need of more volunteers.”

(CJN, August 22) More than 100 synagogues, Jewish institutions and some hospitals across Canada were the targets of an emailed bomb threat early on the morning of Aug. 21.
The Federal Policing National Security Program is investigating the source of the threats, the RCMP stated.
In Toronto, police said they attended buildings in the Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue area. The buildings were evacuated as a precaution and cleared, police said.
In Montreal, at least a dozen Jewish houses of worship were targeted, reported The Canadian Press. The city’s Adath Israel Synagogue was among the institutions that received the email. It was was evacuated and inspected by police.
Several hospitals in Ottawa also received the bomb threat but were cleared by police.
An organization named “COURT” said it was behind the mass emailed threats
The emails stated “We placed many explosives inside your building…. The bombs are set to go off in a few hours. You will all end up in a pool of blood, none of you deserve to keep living.”

A similar email signed by “COURT” was sent to a group of malls and hospitals in New Delhi, India yesterday, without any reference to anything Jewish, according to The Times of India. No explosives were found in those instances.  
B’nai Brith Canada’s Toronto office received the threat in a general email inbox and on the advice of police, evacuated the building, while waiting for police to sweep it for bombs, said Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy. B’nai Brith has also been in contact with police in Montreal and York Region, he said.
The threat was the first one the organization has received since Oct. 7, but Robertson said he wasn’t surprised that it happened.
“This underscores the need for greater change with our leadership across the country and the handling of antisemitism. Things like this don’t occur in a vacuum. This is the result of a devolving situation that we’ve been witnessing for months. It was only a matter of time before the incidents we’ve been seeing playing out on streets across the country morphed into a threat like this,” he told The CJN.
B’nai Brith is still reaching out to community partners, but Richardson said the people he’s spoken with are “shocked.”
“Nobody wants to wake up to a bomb threat against their institution. People are shocked but nobody is surprised. We’ve been a community that’s been under siege, facing a wave of unsustainable hate for months now.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said in a statement that it had been in contact with law enforcement and the emails posed “no imminent threat.”
“All indications point to these threats being nuisance emails designed to disrupt lives,” the advocacy group said. “Jewish Canadians will not be intimidated—we will continue to take part in Jewish life. We will stay vigilant but we will never be intimidated.”

In Winnipeg, both the Shaarey Zedek and Temple Shalom indicated that they had received the threats.
An email sent out by Temple Shalom contained the following:
Many of you may already be aware that there was a serious threat to over 100 Jewish organizations across Canada today, August 21, 2024. Temple Shalom was one of the organizations specifically targeted. Staff from Shaarey Zedek immediately notified the Police. Steve contacted me to let me know this and to let me know that Shaarey Zedek staff had gone home. We cancelled Temple meetings and activities scheduled for today and Steve went home. This afternoon, the police came to the Temple and ensured us that it was safe for people to return to the building. We are grateful that we have developed robust safety protocols and installed numerous security devices over the past few years for unfortunate incidents like this.

The Jewish Federation and the community including institutional leaders and rabbis are working together and working with law enforcement to ensure the safety and security of us all.

This was an act of cowardice that was done to create chaos and fear. We will continue to provide services and programming — this will not disrupt our community. Please know that the safety of our congregation and staff is our top priority. But we will not live in fear; we will continue to stand strong and maintain a vibrant Jewish presence in Winnipeg. 

Review by BERNIE BELLAN It’s been a long time since I’ve sat through as totally enjoyable a show as Rainbow Stage’s current production of Mary Poppins. And, judging by the enthusiastic response of the full house audience on Wednesday, August 21, this particular production is probably going to go down as one of Rainbow Stage’s most successful shows ever.
I knew this show was going to be good because I had interviewed choreographer Josh Assor prior to opening night (you can watch that interview at Josh Assor interview) and Josh had told me that, while the show is not a Disney touring show per se (and Disney touring shows are well known for their magnificent production values), it does incorporate the essential elements of the version of Mary Poppins that premiered on Broadway in 2006.
Of course, Mary Poppins is a universally beloved show – even if the author of the Mary Poppins stories, P. L Travers, was not a particularly likeable person – and was very likely an antisemite (based on her having become a book reviewer for an antisemitic journal known as “The New Pioneer.” As a side note, isn’t it interesting how other celebrated authors of children’s stories, such as Roald Dahl, also turned out to be raving antisemites?)
The reason that I digress into an exploration of some of the less savoury aspects of universally beloved children’s stories is because, no matter how enchanting it was watching the Rainbow Stage version of Mary Poppins, I also bore in mind the story behind the making of the Mary Poppins movie, which involved the clash between Travers and Walt Disney, which was told in the movie, “Saving Mr. Banks.” (It has also been suggested numerous times that Disney too bore antisemitic feelings.)
But, juxtaposed against my ambivalence about loving a show for which the two individuals most responsible for its creation may have been antisemites, is the appreciation I have for the brilliance of the songwriting duo of Jewish brothers Richard and Robert Sherman.
With such classics as “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Chim Chim Cheree,” and the showstopping dance number “Step in Time,” (and I apologize if I haven’t included some of your own favourites from the show, of which there are many others I could have mentioned), the music in Mary Poppins remains timeless.
And – what about those dance numbers? They ran from the hugely exuberant – as in “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “Step in Time” to the magical, as in the coming to life of the stone statue of Neleus as performed by the oh so lithe Ben Despins.
I admit that in writing this I was heavily influenced by Holly Harris’s rhapsodic review of the show, which appeared in the Saturday, August 17 issue of the Free Press, and whose background as a musician imbues her reviews with a much greater appreciation of musical excellence than someone like me could ever hope to emulate.
In all honestly I hadn’t seen Mary Poppins since it first played in theatres here in 1964. My own kids were much more into later Disney films. In fact I don’t think any of my kids have ever seen Mary Poppins.
But, being at Rainbow Stage on a gorgeous summer evening and seeing those magical sets that were designed for this show – and feeling the enormous energy that the multitalented cast put into the performance left my wife and me absolutely spellbound.
And, even though Rainbow Stage does have an enormous seating capacity (2,300 according to its website), there was hardly an empty seat to be found – from what I could see looking around. So, if you’re at all hesitating about buying tickets for this show, I would suggest not to delay a moment longer. Mary Poppins runs until September 1, so there should be opportunities to buy tickets if you haven’t already, but from what I’m told by a publicist for the show, tickets have been selling extremely fast.
One more thing: I’m always apprehensive about getting out of the Rainbow Stage parking lot, but it took amazingly little time to exit this time. It seems that Rainbow Stage has done everything absolutely right with this show.