Local News
How walking into the wrong synagogue service led to my rekindling memories of the Stall family on McAdam Avenue
By GERRY POSNER I often attend synagogue on Shabbat, though I do miss from time to time. Recently, I was back from a trip and was just not ready to return to my regular synagogue services. I planned to miss it. Then, an email surfaced on the Friday before that particular Shabbat. The sender, who was a good friend of mine, invited me to come to my shul where he was not a member, but there was to be a person speaking that day at the synagogue on a topic dear to him, relating to a tour he had taken not that long ago to Morocco. The speaker was his leader from that tour. So, I changed my mind and, sure enough, there I was at synagogue again – after a three week absence.
The service had two unexpected occurrences, at least for me. First, as I scanned the handout that was given to attendees prior to the service, i realized that nowhere was there any reference to a speaker. When I met my friend he was as perplexed as I was, so we set out into other areas of the Beth Tzedec Synagogue (and there are many there). As it turned out, there was another service going on at the same time upstairs in the gymnasium. Sure enough, there was the man who was going to be speaking.
However, that moment presented a definite dilemma for me. When I was in the chapel at the regular service, there on the handout was a notice that there was to be an “Oifruf “that morning for a Benjamin Stall – to a Rachel Calmas. The Calmas name meant little to me, but I was quite familiar with the Stall name. For anyone who has lived in Winnipeg at any time, the name Stall is almost immediately recognizable. There was once Stall and Son, well known to many in the business world and there members of the Stall family that lived on McAdam Avenue whom I knew from my Winnipeg days as a student about to enter university. Thus, I decided to return to the regular service.
Many readers may recall a tragedy that came upon three Jewish Winnipeg families in June of 1963 when a car accident in Alberta killed Samuel Corman and Morton Stall, also severely injuring Arnold Popeski, as well as ending the lives of three other young men, also from Winnipeg. Many in the Winnipeg Jewish community and indeed beyond were affected. I was for sure. As it turned out, arising from that tragedy was a relationship with the Stall family that had a major impact on my life thereafter.
Of the three boys – Corman, Stall, and Popeski, my most significant connection was with Samuel Corman, as my family and his family were tight and I was a good friend of his. I also was closely connected with Arnold from AZA, where we were both active. I was friendly with Morton, but I knew him the least, as he was in the north end and I was a south ender and, though we crossed paths,I didn’t really know the Stall family, that is – until the summer of 1963.
As it turned out, that summer I had a job as a Fuller Brush salesman. My territory included a good chunk of the north end, particularly in the area where the Stalls lived: 160 McAdam Avenue. Back in those days, women were usually at home during the day and not at work – at least that was my experience then as a door to door salesman. I could work at my own time and pace. Thus, I often had the time and desire to visit the Stalls that summer, even after the shiva. It was at the shiva where I first met a younger brother to Morton, Richard, who was well under ten years of age. I knew his sister Phyllis (hard for a teenage boy not to recognize a girl so pretty) and I knew of an older sister, Shelley (later Shelley Rusen).
But the people I really came to know were Nathan and Gert Stall, the parents of those four Stall children. I would pop into their home unannounced and, if it bothered them, they never mentioned it. I sensed that they welcomed those visits. I often interacted with Phyllis and Richard.
But then, in the fall of 1963, off I was off to the University of Toronto law school. Nate Stall had told me that he had occasion to come to Toronto on business from time to time and he would be happy to take me out for dinner if I wanted.
Well, that meant little to me at first, but as I settled in at my sister’s apartment for my first year away, I was more than happy to take up the offer to go with Mr. Stall for supper. When he called me in October 1963, I was delighted to go out with him. Now, not only did he take me for dinner, he took me to what was then the premier restaurant in the c -ity of Toronto and for years going forward: the Carmen Club. You could smell the steaks and garlic for blocks around. What a joy that was for me to eat so well and with a man whom I had come to know. I suppose, on reflection, I might have served as a kind of relief from the grind of a business trip and perhaps he connected me to Morton.
That dinner was followed by many other Carman Club dinners over the four and a half years I remained in Toronto. I loved our times together and he always gave my parents a first hand report on me. I saw him and indeed his wife Gert later when I returned to live in Winnipeg and we always had a bond. I never saw Richard after 1963, or if I did, it just does not make my memory pool. I did see Phyllis of course, after her marriage to Marvin Shenkarow. Also, from time to time I connected with Shelley and her husband, Aubie Rusen.
So there I was at synagogue and who was sponsoring the kiddush for the Oifruf for his son but Richard Stall and his wife Lisa Berger, another former Winnipege – related to the Berger family of doctors. It was quite the moment for me. I waited until after the service ended before going up to Richard and Lisa. It was hard to focus on the service as all those memories of the Stall family came flooding back to me.
Given that Richard is the last surviving member of the family, it was all the more significant. We had a good chat, including remembering that same day, March 23, was his late sister Phyllis’s birthday some 77 years ago.
I was so immersed in conversation that by the time I made it to the kiddush table, the lunch I had expected would be waiting there for me was gone. There are worse things, I suppose. I also met another son of Richard and Lisa’s, Dr. Nathan (for his grandfather) Morton (for his uncle) Stall. That name, Nathan Stall might well be familiar to readers as he was the go-to guy in the media for expert commentary on the impact of Covid on the elderly. He was on TV frequently. And now, Nathan Stall is already, at a young age, a prominent geriatrician. As well, not that long ago, he was a candidate for the Liberal Party in Ontario in the 2022 election. Although he did not win, he did very well, losing by only 1,000 votes.
As it turned out, the Shabbat that day was Shabbat Zahkor or “remembrance.”
Well, I certainly was into that Shabbat as I did a whole lot of remembering. And yet, the opportunity to remember and indeed engage in the past so meaningfully for me all came about when because I was supposed to go to another event that day – which I missed entirely. Strange how it all played out.
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.
