By MYRON LOVE Despite the many pressures buffeting our and other Jewish communities across Canada, Carrie Shenkarow remains upbeat. “These are scary times,” says the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg Chair, “but I prefer to focus on the positives. Our Jewish community is thriving. We have an outstanding CEO in Jeff Lieberman. He and his staff are operating like a well-oiled machine.”
 
Carrie Shenkarow, who was appointed to her current position in mid-December, has a lifelong record of community participation and leadership starting from a young age. The daughter of Barry and Rena Shenkarow attributes her attitude toward giving back to the community to her parents and her grandparents, Sam and Shirley Shenkarow, and Paul and Ruth Stajer.
 
“I remember sleepovers at my mom’s parents’ home when I was growing up,” Shenkarow says. “They were Holocaust survivors. I was really impressed by how my grandparents and the many other Holocaust survivors here formed a community together and rebuilt their lives.”
 
Her parents and paternal grandparents set the example for her in terms of community involvement.
 
Sam Shenkarow was a pharmacist and businessman who served on the board of Ramah Hebrew School and was a founder of the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba. Shirley Shenkarow was also involved in the community.
“From all four grandparents, I learned the value of family, the merit of hard work and perseverance, and the importance of building a good name for yourself. They were people of good character.”
 
Carrie’s father, Barry, is best known as one of the owners of the original Winnipeg Jets and served as president and governor of the team. From 1977 to 1996, the Shenkarow household revolved around the team. In 1987, Rena founded and chaired the Winnipeg Jets Goals for Kids Foundation, which distributed over $2 million to children’s charities in Manitoba.
 
Both Barry and Rena have been strong supporters of Israel and active in community life. Barry has served on the board of the Health Sciences Centre Research Foundation, chaired the board of the Asper Jewish Community Campus, and served on both the investment committee and board of the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba. In addition to Goals for Kids, Rena has been active with Hadassah, ORT, NCJW, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. 
 
Our new Federation Chair attended Ramah Elementary School and Balmoral Hall, where, she says, despite Balmoral’s Christian roots, her experiences at the school strengthened her sense of Jewish identity.
 
In her teen years, Shenkarow was a member of USY and BBYO youth groups. She attended BB Camp for several seasons and later joined the staff.
It was after she was married, she recounts, that she was encouraged to become a community volunteer. It was at that time that she began volunteering for the Federation.
“I took a break from the Federation after a few years,” she notes.
During that period, she served on the boards of BB Camp and Shaarey Zedek. In 2014, she rejoined the Federation as a board member and Chair of the March of the Living committee.
“One of the things I’m most passionate about is March of the Living,” she said in an interview last year with the Post while commenting on receiving the King Charles III Coronation Medal. “I have been chairing the committee since 2017. I chaperoned the program in 2018.”
Shenkarow is returning to central and eastern Europe again in July, this time with her youngest daughter, Shirley, as part of a 30-person Holocaust Memorial Sites Study tour for educators organized by Westwood Collegiate history teacher Kelly Hiebert, University of Winnipeg history professor Jody Perrun, and Na’ama Samphir, a teacher at Gray Academy, all of whom teach about the Holocaust. The group, two of whom are non-Jewish educators, will be visiting Austria, Germany, and Poland. The tour will include visits to the site of the Warsaw Ghetto; the preserved camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, and Mauthausen; the Jewish districts in Krakow and Vienna; the killing centre at Hartheim; Berchtesgaden; the Obersalzburg and other sites.
In 2022, Shenkarow chaired the CJA campaign. After October 7, 2023, she was asked to chair the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg’s newly established Public Affairs Task Force to advocate for the community and collaborate with other local organizations.
“In light of the upsurge in antisemitism post-October 7,” she says, “our task force began reaching out to other communities.”
One of those organizations was the Rainbow Resource Centre. “We worked to educate Pride members,” she recalls. “Many didn’t know a lot about the situation in Israel. We formed J-PIC (Jewish Pride & Inclusive Committee). We held a joint Shabbat dinner and other programs and have forged a strong relationship with them.”
She further reports that the Task Force is also reaching out to the Filipino community. “We are having a joint program with the Filipino community on May 7 at the Filipino Cultural Centre,” Shenkaorw says. “The evening will be about sharing our cultures and providing opportunities to socialize.”
She also mentions a community clothing drive for newly arriving Yazidi families.
“What we do best in our community is fundraise through the efforts of the Combined Jewish Appeal,” she notes.
And while the CJA campaign seems to hit new heights almost every year, she points out that the needs of our communal organizations continue to grow apace, with a special emphasis on increased funding for security across all institutions and programs.
 “We are trying to reach out to younger adults in our community, both in terms of donations and volunteering,” she says. “In the past few months, we have met with many younger people to help them understand what exactly the Federation does. Many of them don’t know.”
Shenkarow also expressed surprise at learning how many members of the community are Israeli. “We estimate that about half of our Jewish population of roughly 13,000 to 14,000 are newcomers, not just from Israel. That is a credit to how effective our 26-year-old Grow Winnipeg initiative has been.”
“We are constantly working toward making Winnipeg a better place for our community,” she concludes, “and we look forward to continuing to celebrate our achievements.

By BERNIE BELLAN It’s been many years since I’ve heard from Sara Kreindler. Sara’s name first appeared in The Jewish Post & News in 2002 when a satirical musical titled “A Touch of Class” was reviewed by the late Arnold Ross. That particular production featured songs from popular Broadway shows that touched upon themes such as “greed, poverty, oppression, and social unrest.”
When she appeared in that show, Ross noted, Kreindler had just recently returned to Winnipeg from England, where she had obtained a doctorate in Social Psychology from Oxford University.
While at Oxford, Kreindler found time to compose a satirical musical titled “Charity,” which played to rave reviews there, and was performed five times.
Continuing in the theme of writing satirical musicals, Sara has now teamed up with her mother, Reena, to write a new musical titled “A Perfect Man,” which is set to run at the Gargoyle Theatre from May 6-17.
According to a press release we received, “A Perfect Man” is “a satirical musical, set on a fictional analogue of ‘The Bachelor’.
“The story follows an anthropologist who arrives to research TV’s hottest reality-dating show — only to discover she’s been made a contestant, and the bachelor is her high school crush. Past and present collide against an exuberant pastiche score that uses vintage musical styles to highlight modern absurdities.”
“Praised as ‘a musician [who] can make biofuels funny’ (CBC), Sara is known for whip-smart satire on a panoply of topics. Her digital musical, ‘Larry Saves the Canadian Healthcare System, created during her former life as an academic, has garnered over 84,000 YouTube views. Naturally, she had a field day with the subject of reality dating.
“The topic just begs for campy zaniness, which I think we all need in these times — but also for a more cerebral critique of what these shows say about the culture that spawned them,” says Kreindler. And thanks to the romance context, the satire is woven into a deeper, more personal story. “It’s satire with a heart.”

Here is some more information about Sara Kreindler, taken from a 2009 article I wrote about her:
“Born in Israel, Sara’s precocious talent was nurtured by her mother, Reena, whose own particular talent is literary, not musical. According to Reena, however, Sara was singing from the time she was a baby, and she began to study piano at the age of four.
“As a young girl, Sara began writing her own songs and poems, along with the “occasional musical”, notes Reena. Yet, Sara’s rare talent put her at odds with the typical interests of other children her own age, on top of which she attended a school to which she was exposed to a fair degree of antisemtism.
“As a result, Sara says, being bullied was a common aspect of her childhood. On one occasion, when she was nine, she notes, Sara fought back against one particular bully by reciting the following little ditty:
“I write so many epigrams to you that all the people laugh.
I’m tired of writing epigrams.
I want to write your epitaph!”
“Sara went on to compose a musical titled ‘Flutesong’ while she was a student at Vincent Massey Collegiate, she says. After doing her undergraduate work at the University of Manitoba, majoring in Psychology, Sara won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University.
“Sara eventually earned a doctorate in Social Psychology and returned to Winnipeg, where she began teaching at the University of Manitoba, but she said she didn’t enjoy the “mass production” style of teaching upwards of 300 students at a time, so she switched careers and began doing health research for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.”

All the while Sara has been continuing to compose and perform her own songs, often teaming up with her mother, as she has for “A Perfect Man.”

Showtimes and ticket information for The Perfect Man are available at:
http://www.thegargoyletheatre.com/upcoming-events/the-perfect-man