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Fringe festivals throughout North America – including Winnipeg, have become hugely hostile locations for anyone who has expressed support for Israel
By BERNIE BELLAN What happens when a fringe festival performer, who also happens to be Jewish, doesn’t shy away from voicing their support for Israel? In today’s world that performer is bound to be subjected to a torrent of hate – both online and in person.
Such was the case in Winnipeg recently when Melanie Gall, a longtime performer at Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival, found herself caught up in an organized campaign of harassment and bullying – culminating in calls to boycott her shows and defacement of her posters.
To begin, here’s a brief bio of Melanie which should give a good idea how accomplished she is: “Melanie Gall is a professional musician and music historian who holds advanced degrees from several academic institutions, including Manhattan School of Music in New York, Mozarteum University in Salzburg, and Glenn Gould School in Toronto. Melanie is an internationally-acclaimed performer and has sung at Lincoln Center and Royal Albert Hall. She has also written several plays featuring historic music and “Ingenue,” about Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland, had a sold out Off-Broadway run at SoHo Playhouse and won a Best Musical Award at the Adelaide Festival. Melanie divides her time between Alberta, Canada and New York City. She also hosts the Savvy Girls Podcast with her sister.”
As a personal aside I first met Melanie in 2015 at that year’s Winnipeg Fringe Festival. It has been my practice for years to give any Jewish performer at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival some advance publicity – both on this website and within the pages of The Jewish Post & News (now called The Jewish Post). I’ve had a chance to talk with Melanie before, but until this year she had never mentioned that her being Jewish had caused any problems for her.
This year was different, however. While there were several other Jewish performers at Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival I didn’t hear of anyone else being subjected to an organized campaign of harassment the way Melanie was. I did receive an email on July 20 from another Jewish performer by the name of Randy Ross who told me he was upset by seeing a pro-Palestinian demonstration march through Exchange Square – the centre of Fringe activity. Randy said that he and “another Jewish woman told fringe folks we were offended. Festival staff was nice and receptive.”
I hadn’t heard of anything else that might have been construed as antisemitic until I happened to be speaking to another Fringe performer by the name of Jem Rolls (who isn’t Jewish) after the Winnipeg Fringe was over. During the course of our conversation Jem asked me whether I was aware of what had been happening to Melanie Gall? When I said I wasn’t, Jem told me that not only had she been subjected to harassment in Winnipeg, but that she had encountered an even worse form of harassment in Edmonton, which is where she is scheduled to next appear.
As a result I contacted Melanie and asked her to describe what had happened to her in Winnipeg, also what was going on in Edmonton (where that city’s fringe festival is not slated to begin until August 15.)
Melanie explained that she has not been shying away from maintaining a very strong pro-Israel stance on social media, specifically Instagram. “Nobody (in the fringe circuit) has been quite as vocal online as I have the past nine months,” she said. Melanie added though that “I have not said anything against Palestinian rights. I have said ‘What about the hostages?’ “
But these day anyone who is brave enough to post support for Israel on social media is setting themselves up for vicious condemnation – which is something Melanie had been quite aware of, but which has not led to her backing down from her position.
Still, she realized that certain venues this year would be far too hostile for her to consider participating in those fringe festivals. As she told me, “I purposely didn’t do any shows on the West Coast because everyone (who’s a fringe festival performer) I know on the West Coast is a virulently anti-Israel performer.”
As well, Melanie ruled out performing in two other fringe festivals where she had performed in previous years: Halifax and Orlando.
“Halifax was posting antisemitic things so I wasn’t going to go to Halifax,” she noted. As for Orlando – “the Queers for Palestine came in,” so she decided not to go to Orlando either.
But, in contrast with those two fringe festivals, Melanie had been assured that Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival would not tolerate the kind of harassment that she knew she would receive in those other cities.
The director of Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival is Chuck McEwen, who has been in that role since 2008. (Prior to coming here McEwen was the director of the Toronto Fringe Festival.)
Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival has traditionally been the second largest fringe festival in North America, surpassed only by Edmonton’s.
And, to be fair, when Melanie Gall began to experience overt antisemitic behaviour on the part of some Winnipeg Fringe volunteers and online during her recent stay here, she did say that her interaction with Chuck McEwen was quite positive. “Chuck was wonderful,” she said. “I have a few emails from him apologizing for what had been happening.”
So, what happened to Melanie during her stay in Winnipeg, from July 17-28?
To begin with, Melanie explained, she “was told no one was allowed to wear pro-Palestinian symbols if they were on staff. I showed up to my first performance (at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People) and my tech was wearing a pro-Palestinian pin. The next day a volunteer at my venue was wearing a kaffiyeh.”
Still, even with that, Melanie wasn’t sure that she was being singled out for harassment.
However, on the third day, she said, “the site supervisor came and was wearing a pro-Palestinian symbol” and told Melanie that he was wearing that deliberately because he was coming to Melanie’s venue.
He told her, “that stance you’re taking (on social media) is a political symbol.”
“That person was relieved” from his duties after Melanie complained to the Fringe office staff, she noted.
Melanie was also the target of an organized campaign on pro-Palestine social media calling for her shows to be boycotted.
On her last day of performing at the Winnipeg Fringe, Melanie says, her “tech came wearing a pro-Palestinian symbol. He was walking back and forth with that symbol.” (She didn’t say what the symbol was.)
Yet, despite what was happening toward her, Melanie says “at no point did I ever demand that they (volunteers or paid staff) take off” their pro-Palestinian pins or other symbols of support for Palestine.
Notwithstanding Melanie’s not having demanded that anyone remove pro-Palestinian symbols, a site supervisor by the name of Eric Rae posted on social media words to the effect, “We have a Zionist in our midst harassing pro-Palestinians.”
As Melanie said during our phone conversation, “This is so ridiculous. I’m being harassed and bullied because I’m Jewish…it’s not about Israel.”
And, while Fringe Festival organizers in Winnipeg took her complaints very seriously, according to Melanie, “it still went to hell.”
The Edmonton Fringe Festival is adding an entirely new dimension of antisemitism to what she has already experienced, Melanie observed. The show she is planning on performing was actually written by her mother, Karen Gall. It’s a show about funny Alberta landmarks.
In order to enhance the show, Melanie and Karen asked the Edmonton Fringe for a designer who could contribute a digital component to the show.
But, as part of her show, Melanie wanted to include a picture of her working on a kibbutz in Israel. After she told that to the artistic director of the Edmonton Fringe Festival, Murray Utas, Melanie says, the next day she was told by Murray that “the designer had pulled out. It was against their ideology to work with us.”
What also concerns Melanie is the possibility that the pro-Palestine network in Winnipeg will have established contact with a similar network in Edmonton to call for boycotting Melanie and Karen’s show.
As she says, “it’s one thing for them not to work with me – which is egregious in itself” (as the designer who was supposed to work with their show decided), “now I’m known as a Zionist. I’m no longer under the radar here.”
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First year medical student Tim Rozovsky founds new association for local Jewish medical students
By MYRON LOVE In the face of a concerning surge in antisemitism over the past nearly three years, I am happy to report a good news story in that regard. Tim Rozovsky, the founder of the new Jewish Medical Students’ Association of Manitoba, reports that he and his fellow Jewish students enrolled in the University of Manitoba’s Max Rady College of Medicine are not experiencing any significant issues involving antisemitism.
Hopefully, the matter of the notorious Med school Valedictorian who used his podium to attack Israel was a one-off.
“My goal in forming the Jewish Medical Students’ Association of Manitoba,” says the first year medical student, “was to create a safe, supportive environment for my fellow Jewish medical students.”
He reports that the current first year class at the school has eight Jewish students – an increase over more recent years – with maybe a dozen more in the other years.
For a new medical student, Rozovsky already has an impressive resume. He was born in Russia and grew up in Israel. After the completion of his army service in 2018, the then-22-year-old rejoined his parents, Dr. Katya and Alexander, who had moved to Winnipeg a few years before.
Prior to coming to Winnipeg, Rozovsky had completed a personal trainer program out of The Academic College at Wingate in Jerusalem. Some readers may know the young man from his work as a Master Personal Trainer at the Rady JCC.
Shortly after arriving here, he enrolled in a kinesiology program at the University of Winnipeg. He graduated with a BKin Honours in 2023 and did post graduate work at the University of Manitoba. Last fall, he received his MSc in Physiology and Pathophysiology – earning two gold medals, along with 32 awards and scholarships in the process.
Rozovsky says that it was his mother who inspired him to pursue a career in medicine. Dr. Katya Rozovsky is an associate professor at the University of Manitoba and an attending radiologist, specializing in pediatric diagnostic imaging.
(Tim also adds that his wife, Irina Gelzin, whom he married about a year ago, is training to be a nurse.)
Insofar as the Jewish Medical Students’ Association of Manitoba is concerned, Rozovky reports that the group gets together multiple times a year. One of its programs was a joint Chanukah celebration with the Jewish Physicians Association of Manitoba.
There was also a joint program with the Christian Medical and Dental Students’ Association of Manitoba.
“More recently, we have been helping prospective Jewish medical students with their applications,” he says. “Hopefully we will be able to get together over the summer with the incoming Jewish students.”
As to his own future plans, Rozovsky notes that it is too early for him to be deciding on a specialty. “My goal,” he says, “is to work hard and get good grades and become the best doctor that I can be.”
Local News
Gray Academy to Represent Manitoba at National Reach for the Top Competition
By NOAH STRAUSS Posted June 6) Gray Academy’s Reach for the Top team is headed to Moncton, New Brunswick, to represent Manitoba at the National Reach for the Top tournament.
Reach for the Top is a Canadian school league that quizzes teenagers on a variety of different topics, from science and history to pop culture. Reach started out in 1961 in Vancouver, where a local CBC station broadcasted the new show; it eventually became a national broadcast starting in 1966. Alex Trebek, who famously hosted Jeopardy!, started out by hosting Reach for the Top.
Gray Academy’s very own team, made up of Grade 7 and 8 students, will travel to Moncton, New Brunswick, to compete as Team Manitoba. By winning the provincial Reach tournament, they secured their spot in the national competition.
Faculty members at Gray Academy are very supportive of the program. The Jewish Post spoke with three different staff members at the school. Coach and high school teacher Danielle Miller says she is excited for the trip; although she will not be accompanying the team herself, shehas coached them all year.
“This year we had over 20 students come to the club to join us, they practice twice a cycle at lunch,” Miller said. Due to the large turnout this year, two teams had to be formed. At lunch practices, students split into two teams of four where each player has a buzzer. The two teams compete to see who can answer the most questions correctly.
One of the two teams did exceptionally well at various tournaments throughout the year and will be traveling to nationals as the sole team representing Manitoba.
Co-coach Micah Doerksen described Reach as a great academic competition where young minds are tested on various topics through quick,fast-paced questions.
High school guidance counselor Lindsey Leipsic said, “We have athletes, non-athletes, we have students who are really involved and students who are not as involved at school, and we have quiet leaders, and we’ve seen friendships be built in Reach.” Some of her favorite memories of Reach involve seeing students from across Winnipeg come to Gray Academy and bond with one another. Lev Chisick, who is competing at nationals, agreed, saying, “Moncton is going to strengthen our school spirit and make us a better team.”
As the junior team makes their way to Moncton, the senior team will head to provincials. Later this week, students from the senior team will travel to Virden, Manitoba, to compete at the provincial level. The team qualified after placing high enough at their most recent tournament, which took place at St. Paul’s.
Confidence is high as the school heads into these final tournaments. When Nath Goldenberg, who is also competing at nationals, was asked what he is most looking forward to, his answer was short and sweet:“Winning.”
