Local News
Israeli-born Winnipeg teen wins gold at national pairs figure skater competition
By MYRON LOVE Yohnatan Elizarov may well be on the threshold of a dream career. Fresh from winning his first Canadian national pairs figure skating competition – with partner Ava Kemp – in Calgary – in the novice division, the Israeli-born, Winnipeg-raised 18-year-old figure skater says that he would love to have the opportunity to skate with The Ice Capades or Disney On Ice – or emulate Garrett Gosselin, one of the choreographers he has worked with, and appear in a skating show on cruise ships.
But while those may be potential career options, he adds that at this early stage he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself.
Elizarov, who lives with his parents. Elena and German, and younger brothers, Sean, 11, and Jamie, six, has been skating almost since the family arrived in Winnipeg from Haifa when he was five years old. He notes that his mother was passionate about skating – having skated in her native Russia when she was a kid. Her family moved to Israel when she was 14 – bringing an end to her skating dreams.
(There was only one ice rink in Israel at that time.)
“My mom wanted me to learn to skate,” Elizarov recalls, “and I quickly came to enjoy it.”
For the first while, the skating lessons were just about skating. Elena Elizarov notes that most boys – after they learn to skate – gravitate to hockey. One of the coaches in the CanSkate program, howeve,r approached her about enrolling Yohnatan in figure skating instead.
You could say that the kid took to the art like a duck to water. Four years ago, he qualified for the first time for a national competition in his age group – the first Manitoban to have done so in quite some time.
To qualify for the Nationals, he points out, skaters have to first excel at provincial sectional competition and then at a Skate Canada Challenge where they need to place in the top 18 in Novice/Junior/Senior level to qualify for the Nationals. Skate Canada Challenge locations usually change every year (although the competition hasn’t been held in Manitoba in recent years). Yohnatan competed in Skate Canada Challenge competitions in Montreal, Edmonton and, most recently, in Regina. In the most recent national competition, held earlier this year in Ottawa, Elizarov finished ninth out of a field of 18 in the Junior Men discipline.
Last summer, the young skater opted to try pairs skating. He says that he had been considering the idea for a while. Before connecting with Ava Kemp, Elizarov had tried partnering with another girl, but she had a different coach and trained in Virden, which made practices together rather difficult. In Ava Kemp, Elizarov has a partner who lives in the same part of the city and now shares the same coach.
The challenge, Elena Elizarov adds, is to find the right partner in terms of relative size, location and skills level.
“I was at first hesitant about working with another person in my space,” Elizarov admits. “I am more comfortable with that now.”
He notes that he and his partner balance each other emotionally as well. “I alleviate the stress of competing by calming myself whereas Ava gets more excited,” he explains. “We communicate very well.”
Elizarov reports that he puts in about 20 hours a week in training – which includes about 15 hours of on-ice practice. (That is in addition to his university classes in computer science.) “Upper body strength is very important in pairs for the male skater,” he says. “My upper body strength is now three to four times stronger than when I was skating solo.”
In addition to training here at home, Yohnatan and Ava will be spending the summer training at the Canadian Ice Academy in Mississauga. As Elena points out, in Manitoba there is not a lot of competition for pairs skaters.
“If you want to be able to compete with the best, you have to train with the best,” she says, ‘and the best pairs skaters are in Ontario and Quebec.”
As fans of figure skating are no doubt aware, what skaters do on ice becomes a major production. Not only does the coach prepare the skaters for the actual physical skating, but he or she also chooses the choreographer, music and costumes.
Elizarov notes that in his single skating career, he was partial to Michael Buble’s “Feeling Good”. His new singles short program is “Movement” by the musician, Hozier. His and Ava’s new pairs short program will be choreographed by Asher Hill and the music is “Anything You can do” from the musical “Annie Get your Gun”. Their pairs free program was choreographed last year by Garrett Gosselin to “Never Enough” from “The Greatest Showman”.
Elizarov reports that his favourite moves are the lift and the twist. In the latter, he throws his partner into the air as high as he can, where she does a compete double twist before he catches her. In the lift, he holds her over his head while he is skating and she is stretched out in various positions.
“Both the moves are cool,” he says.
As to the judging, he points out that judges have a system in which they award or subtract points based on such skills as the distance between the skaters, how high the male skater throws the female, difficulty of the elements, and how effortless and easy the dance appears.
Having won the novice division in pairs, the Winnipeg skating pair are hoping to be selected to join SkateCanada’s NextGen team with the potential for international competitions.
Having found success in pairs skating, Elizarov says that he is considering cutting back on his singles efforts and focusing more on pairs. “I want to see where it goes,” he says. “I am thinking maybe I will skate for a few more years, then transition into coaching.”
In fact, he is already doing some coaching of younger skaters – one of whom is his little brother, Jamie.
Or maybe he will get that call from Stars On Ice.
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.
