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Lessons in Fusion” speaks to the fluidity of Jewish identity in the contemporary world
Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN In preparing to write this review I searched our archives to see whether we had ever published anything previously about Primrose Mayadag Knazan; sad to say, we hadn’t.
It’s about time we made up for that oversight, as Primrose had already established herself as a playwright of considerable talent, having had her three plays been awarded “Best of Fest” at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival on each occasion she premiered a new play at the Fringe.
Her plays have also been produced by the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, and Sarsavati Productions.
With “Lessons in Fusion”, Primrose enters into the world of fiction writing and, while the book is described as a “Young Adult” novel – not being a young adult myself, I wondered whether I would be as interested in this particular book as much as someone who was in their teens.
It turns out that “Lessons in Fusion” would hardly be limited in its appeal to young readers. As someone who has blended two different cultures in her own life: Filipino and Jewish, Primrose Mayadag Knazan offers readers who might come from a more traditional background tremendous insight into identity, how it is forged over time, and the challenges faced by individuals who, because of the way they look, are stereotyped by others.
The storyline of “Lessons in Fusion” takes place in the pandemic world in which we all now find ourselves, although the action moves back and forth in time as we begin to develop a better understanding of the novel’s protagonist, 16-year-old Sarah Dayan-Abad.
Sarah is a precocious young woman who has developed a keen fascination for “fusion” cooking – blending ingredients from different cultures to create dishes that are an amalgam so totally original they lead to her developing quite a following on a blog she had started when she was 14 years old, titled “fusiononaplate”.
Here is how she describes her blog, when asked to give some information about it by the creators of a new online cooking show in which Sarah would like to participate: “Fusion comfort food, a mash-up of East and West and everything in between. Easy recipes of our classic cravings with a twist.”
Now, given Sarah’s interest in food, one would ordinarily expect that is something she might have inherited from her mother, Grace, who is “Filipinx” (the proper term for someone of Filipino descent, we are told, rather than “Filipino”). Grace, however, has almost no interest at all in cooking, especially Filipino food. The reasons for that become clearer as the story develops.
The reviews that I’ve read of “Lessons in Fusion” to date all make a big fuss over how the author introduces each chapter in the book with a recipe. Apparently Primose Mayadag Knazan is quite the food connoisseur, writing a regular column for the Filipino Journal about food in Winnipeg, as well as maintaining an Instagram account devoted to food,@pegonaplate.
As the story unfolds, Sarah is accepted into a competition known as “Cyber Chef”, in which five young people – all under 20, will compete on a weekly basis until only one is left. By the way, the chapter in which the competition is explained in some detail starts with a recipe for Chanukah latkes, so if this review is just a tad too late to influence your latke recipe, you might want to consider buying the book for next year. Just consider some of the ingredients in Sarah’s latke recipe: “sweet potatoes instead of russets. Instead of traditional sour cream or applesauce…raita made with yogurt, green apple, and mint” – I think you get the idea why the book is titled “Lessons in Fusion”.
Now, I’ll be honest: I barely looked at the recipes in this book, although they seemed tantalizing enough. Yet, for anyone who’s really into cooking, I’m sure the recipes in the book would be reason enough to buy it, as many of them are traditional Jewish recipes turned into something so imaginatively different from what I think most of us have come to accept that we would have a hard time recognizing them.
But, more than the recipes and the fastidious attention to food details that the book incorporates, “Lessons in Fusion” is a coming of age story that is so contemporary in its being set during the pandemic that it offers many real life lessons which can be useful for all of us.
Sarah, for instance, is a good student, yet she’s been forced into online learning as a result of the pandemic. Cooking is a diversion for her – as it had become for so many others once we found ourselves being confined to our homes during the many lockdowns that characterized the first year of the pandemic. While she has two good friends, with whom she communicates online (and you have to appreciate how thoroughly the author is familiar with what is known as “textspeak”), we can still appreciate the extent to which the pandemic has truncated what should have been some of the best parts of young people’s lives.
I don’t want to go into any further detail about the cooking show in which Sarah participates, lest I spoil any surprises for readers.
What I was most interested in reading is how Sarah develops her identity as a Jewish Filipinx. She and her siblings all attend what is described as a “Hebrew Immersion program” in a “private school”, where the students wear uniforms, so I’m assuming it’s based on Gray Academy. Sarah has had a bat mitzvah and is quite proud of her being Jewish.
Yet, beyond her interest in Jewish food, what seems to drive Sarah’s Jewish identity more than anything is her closeness to her baba. At the same time though, the book does describe Sarah’s more tenuous relationship with her Filipinx grandmother, her “lola”, and how cooking also brings the two of them together eventually.
One aspect of the book that might serve as a wake-up call for some readers is how Sarah is stereotyped because of her appearance and, although she can understand how she is regarded by almost anyone she meets (including online) as Filipinx, she herself regards her identity as first and foremost Jewish.
At one point Sarah is asked whether she considers herself “White or Filipino”?
She answers: “Jewish” – to which the questioner responds: “That wasn’t my question.”
So Sarah launches into a more detailed explanation: “But that’s what I am. My parents are Jewish. (Grace had converted when she married Sarah’s father.) I was raised Jewish. It’s not just my religion. It’s my culture. I get all the jokes. I celebrate the holidays. I eat and cook all the food. I even speak some Yiddish. I had family that died in the Holocaust. Go back far enough, I had family that were chased out of Russia. It’s in my blood. I carry it on my shoulders. I. Am . Jewish.”
That exchange goes on, with the questioner insisting on finding out whether Sarah identifies as “White” or not, and with Sarah not sure how to answer the question.
As someone who has been writing extensively about identity in this newspaper, and how much Jewish identity is evolving so rapidly as more and more individuals who have either converted to Judaism or live with someone who is Jewish bring with them backgrounds that are not Jewish, I find it quite fascinating to read a quite authentic description of how confusing it must be for a young person who comes from a blend of ethnic identities when asked to explain their own identity.
For that reason alone I would recommend “Lessons in Fusion” as a real eye opener to so many in our community – and well beyond the Jewish community, in helping to understand how someone might identify strongly as Jewish even when that person’s identity is rooted in a background that is quite different than something with which many of us are familiar.
As for how well written “Lessons in Fusion” is, as a first-time novelist, Primrose Mayadag Knazan shows remarkable talent, although given her success as a playwright to date, it should come as no surprise that she has made the transition to fiction writing so successfully.
“Lessons in Fusion”
By Primrose Mayadag Knazan
Published by Great Plains Publishing , 2021
288 pages
More about Primrose Mayadag Knazan
Primrose Madayag Knazan brings an interesting perspective to what it means to become Jewish
By BERNIE BELLAN
As someone who had already established a solid reputation as a successful playwright, Primrose Madayag Knazan knew that she was taking on a challenge of quite a different sort when a publisher proposed that she consider writing a book of fiction aimed at the Young Adult market.
“Writing plays was easier than writing a novel,” Primrose told me during the course of a lengthy phone interview.
“But Great Plains (her publisher) approached me with the idea of writing a book. They said I’ve always been so successful with plays, why don’t I write something – either non fiction or Young Adult?”
The timing was right for her to begin thinking about writing a book, she says. It was the fall of 2020, the Covid pandemic had set in, and she actually had more time to write since she was working from home. Her two young boys were both in school and, while she was certainly busy enough – she had begun writing a food blog as well as writing a regular column for the Filipino Journal about food, Primrose says that she didn’t have any plays in the works, so the idea of writing a book at that time appealed to her.
Around the same time, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis happened, Primrose notes. “It opened people’s eyes about diversity and representation.”
So, the idea of tackling those themes, along with her passion for writing about food, jelled into the basis of “Lessons in Fusion”.
As I explain in my review of the book, the story centres around 16-year-old Sarah Dayan-Abad. The fact that Sarah’s name is a blend of Jewish and Filipino names is no coincidence. And yet, while there are distinct parallels in Sarah’s life to Primrose’s, Primrose wanted to make clear that Sarah is largely an imagined character.
Having grown up in Winnipeg herself, Primrose says that, while she was raised Catholic, she didn’t find the Catholic church appealing.
“I grew up at a time when I didn’t fit in with other Filipino kids,” she says.
For instance, she notes that she “always wanted to be a blonde. I knew a part of me always wanted to be White.”
At the same time, she says that “ever since I was a kid, I wanted to write plays, books, poetry.
It was while she was in university here – where she was taking a double major in psychology and sociology, that she also had her first immersion in theatre. Primrose says she fell in love with the theatre and, years after she graduated, she became involved in it again, as an actor, as a producer, and as a playwright.
Her first plays were written for Winnipeg’s Fringe Festival (the first one was written in 2000) and each time she entered a new play there (three times altogether), her plays went on to win “Best of Fest”.
It was also while she was in university that she met the man who would eventually become her husband, Josh Knazan.
Yet, while Josh came from a firm Ashkenazie Jewish background, he didn’t insist that Primrose convert to Judaism before they married.
“It was after he proposed to me that I told him I wanted to convert to Judaism – not before,” Primrose explains.
Ever since converting – in 2002, under Rabbi Alan Green’s tutelage, Primrose says that she has become “very comfortable in being a part of the Jewish community.”
“Judaism is such a beautiful religion that I fell in love with it. With Catholicism there are no shades of gray. Everything is black and white. Judaism is so much more nuanced.”
“I’m an outgoing person,” she says. “I’ve been able to be involved in the synagogue (Shaarey Zedek). I have a lot of new friends.”
And, while Primrose says that she has made sure that her two kids will grow up in a Jewish milieu – her older son was just recently Bar Mitzvahed, she says, the notion of “fusing” Filipino and Jewish culture is something that she is keenly interested in doing.
The story in “Lessons in Fusion” centres around food – and not just Filipino or Jewish food.
Raising two boys, especially one who was now a teenager, did give Primrose a certain insight into how young people think – and how they communicate, especially through texting.
Portions of “Lessons in Fusion” have some of the young characters texting with each other. “When I showed it to my son, he told me that I had it all wrong. No one texts in full words,” he said. “I had to learn textspeak from him.”
Something that Primrose wanted to avoid though, in writing a Young Adult novel, was “writing anything dystopian”. She says that she didn’t want to write yet one more book about “the end of the world”.
At the same time that she wanted to tackle issues of “diversity and representation” in her book, Primrose says that her older son was an “inspiration” for her when he told her he “didn’t want to read ‘issue books’ or books about ‘racism’.”
And, while Primrose and Josh are determined to give their two boys a solid Jewish upbringing, they both want them to be exposed to Filipino culture as well, Primrose says.
“They were both in the Hebrew Bilingual program at Brock Corydon” – the older boy has now graduated and is at Grant Park, but they’re both also involved in “Filipino dance”.
Unlike the character Sarah in “Lessons in Fusion”, moreover, who does not have a close relationship with her Filipino relatives – save one aunt, Primrose and Josh’s boys have close relationships with both their Jewish and Filipino relatives.
Sarah, however, identifies entirely as Jewish. The idea of creating a character who, even though she looks Filipino, doesn’t think of herself as Filipino at all, came to Primrose when she herself wondered what she would have been like had she been “raised exclusively Jewish”?
As noted, Primrose has a real passion for food – experimenting with it, writing about it and, as she explained to me, helping to promote local Filipino restaurants and stores.
“My head is focused on food blogging and promoting Filipino food,” she says.
“But when the pandemic happened,” so many restaurants had to close down, including many Filipino ones, she observes. So, her blog and column in the Filipino Journal became even more important to Primrose. She says that “in the past two years I’ve taken the food blogging seriously. I’ve always wanted to feature Manitoba products” as a way of helping local producers.
And, while “Lessons in Fusion” is largely a coming of age novel, as Sarah participates in an extremely demanding competition where she is required to come up with entirely original recipes for a TV show on a weekly basis, Primrose observes that “the growth in Sarah’s recipes parallels the growth in Sarah as a person to the point where she blends her two cultures” – and feels wholly comfortable in both.
That’s also the story of Primrose Madayag Knazan’s life: Someone who feels totally comfortable in her own skin as she blends Filipino and Jewish cultures into a unique amalgam. And, for someone who is as interested in identity as I am – and how fluid it is, having Primrose as part of the Jewish community offers one more reason why other members of our community should feel warm in the knowledge that the Jewish community is a blend of cultures and one in which people of quite different backgrounds can feel totally accepted.
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Chesed Shel Emes panel delves into different aspects of death and dying
By MYRON LOVE They say there are two things you can count on in life – death and taxes. I don’t know about taxes – but no one escapes death.
When we are younger, few give much thought to dying. As we age though, we come ever closer to that final reality. The best we can hope for – in my view – is to live to a relatively old age in relatively good health and pass away quickly – preferably in your sleep.
So what would one consider a “good death?” That was one of the questions that was discussed by a panel of three experts on the subject who appeared together on Sunday, November 24, in a program at the Chesed Shel Emes titled: “The Last Stop – Reflections on Living and Dying”.
(The Chesed Shel Emes is our community’s non-profit Jewish funeral chapel; the only one of its kind in North America).
About 180 people were in attendance – both in person and online, as independent Rabbi Matthew Leibl, palliative care specialist Dr. Bruce Martin, and Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov, a psychiatrist who is one of the world’s authorities on the subject of the emotional aspects surrounding death and dying, shared their experiences and perspectives. Alison Gilmur, popular culture and lifestyles reporter for the Free Press. served as the moderator.
A “good death” – as opposed to a “bad death” – is important for patients and families alike, Chochinov noted.
“Is dying in your sleep a good death?” Rabbi Leibl asked. “That depends on both the individual and the family. It certainly doesn’t give the individual much time to think about it beforehand. I think the major concern for most people is that death be as painless as possible.”
“The problem is that you only die once,” Chochinov pointed out. “There is no rehearsal. Many fear the unknown. And you don’t know what the path will be, what it will be like for you. Or if you will still be you afterward.”
Gilmour asked the panelists what people fear most about dying? Chochinov cited the case of one woman who refused to take her medication because she feared it would make her confused – the way it had her mother prior to her death. Reassuring her that she was in capable hands allowed her to accept proper pain management and die peacefully.
Another anecdote from Chochinov concerned the case of a young woman who was facing death – with a young family and a young child at hand. “She was concerned that her little girl would have no memory of her,” Chochinov noted. “We completed something called Dignity Therapy, which allowed her to create a written legacy that would eventually be shared with her child.”
Rabbi Leibl referred to a member of the Shaarey Zedek who had been suffering for some time. She chose to die at home but, before her passing, she asked her children to leave the room. She and the rabbi talked.
“I asked if she was afraid,” he recalled. “She said that she wasn’t afraid, but that she worried that she would never see her family again.”
Dr. Martin noted that every death is personal. “There is no common thread,’ he said. “A last conversation can be profound or trivial.
“One concern for the dying is not being able to live to see their grandchildren grow up and the shared moments they will miss.”
Chochinov also added that some people are worried about the process of dying and what it may be like. “While dying is inevitable, suffering ought not to be”.
Gilmour asked what people can do to help comfort someone who is dying?
Chochinov’s answer was simple: “Be sure to show up”. “When you know someone is dying,” he noted, “for many the impulse is to stay away, to withdraw. You don’t know what to say,” he observed. “Don’t try to fix what can’t be fixed. But do show up and listen.”
Martin recalled a former mentor who suggested that the most important question that someone who is visiting someone who is terminally ill is: ‘What can you do to help?’ “
“People who are dying don’t need to be reminded about it,” Rabbi Leibl observed. “Although every case is different, a visitor should talk to the afflicted individual the same way you would talk to anyone else. You can talk about life, for example, or what you are reading, or a show you are watching together.”
Gilmour concluded her questioning by bringing up the issue of government-approved Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) – medically assisted suicide.
A number of liberal rabbis Are in favour of MAID, Rabbi Leibl noted. “Judaism however dictates that we must do everything we can to prevent death,” he pointed out.
“I have officiated at funerals for a few people who have chosen IAID,” he reported. “One such funeral was for a Holocaust survivor – in her 90s. I spoke with her the day before she died. She was at peace. I viewed what she was doing as courageous.”
Chochinov said it is also important to look at factors that can undermine a patient’s will to live, such as poorly controlled pain, limited access to palliative care and lack of supports, including respite.“MAID is driven by a desire for personal autonomy,” he observed. “It was originally designed as an option for patients who were suffering and facing a reasonably foreseeable death.” Eligibility criteria have been expanded, making patients not imminently dying, but suffering, able to request MAiD.He expressed grave concerns about extending MAiD for people who are mentally ill. “We simply can’t know which of these patients might improve with adequate time, support and care.”
In response to a later follow-up question from a member from the audience, Bruce Martin added that, in the case of people with dementia and MAID, the latter may prevent children and grandchildren from spending more time with the parent/ grandparent. After all, who then decides when the time is right?
The panelists were asked about talking about death and dying and how to cope. Martin noted that when he speaks to kids in schools, there is a lot of interest in the subject.
A question about planned giving elicited a comment from Chochinov about the importance of not only leaving a will, but letting family know what your wishes are. “It’s never too early to talk about these things”, he said, “but if you put it off long enough, there may come a time when it’s too late”.
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Jewish scholar and bibliophile provides overview of hidden treasures hidden in Chevra Mishnayes congregation library
By MYRON LOVE Most shuls have a library of religious texts – or genizah (storage space) for discards – often books that were either donated specifically to the congregation or private collections dropped off at the synagogue after the original owners passed away.
On Sunday, December 8, the egalitarian Chvera Mishnayes synagogue in Garden City hosted a Lunch and Learning program, the highlight of which was an overview of the books housed at the Chevra Mishnayes – including Chumashim, machzorim, various assorted Talmudic tractates and commentaries on the Torah and Talmud. The program featured a presentation by Justin Jaron Lewis, during which the Yiddishist, bibliophile and professor of religion, revealed subtle features of some of the books, unveiling clues revealing when and where they were published, some direct connections to Winnipeg’s Jewish community and other interesting features.
The Chevra Mishnayes dates back to 1906. It has been at its present location on Jefferson Avenue since 1966. The former Ohel Jacob congregation merged with the Chevra Mishnayes in 1971.
“It’s amazing what people brought with them from the old country,” Lewis commented.
He cited as an example a book from the Chevra Mishnayes collection which was identified as having been bought from a Jewish books store in Toronto, but which had been printed in Poland. He pointed out other books that were published in the 19th century in cities such as Lublin, Vilna and Warsaw – all cities with large Jewish populations.
“The Warsaw edition had Cyrillic writing (based on the Russian-language alphabet) in it,” he noted. ‘Warsaw, Lublin and Vilna were all part of the Russian empire at the time.”
He added that a fourth book was published in Lviv in Ukraine which was part of the Austrian Empire in the 19th Century. “Because the Russians used to tax books that were printed in Russia but were to be taken out of the country, some claimed that their books were published in Austria or another country to avoid the tax,” Lewis explained.
Of interest also, for Jewish geography enthusiasts, Lewis noted, were books with the owners’ names written in them. One book belonged to the family of the well known comedian David Steinberg.
In a second book, Grade 9 Talmud Torah student Israel Pudavick had written his name.
There were other books originally from the collections of a shoichet named B.M Yahweis and one Rev. Martin Weisman.
There are religious commentaries in the Chevra Mishnayes collection penned over the years by Winnipeg rabbis such as Rabbi Y. H. Horowitz, Rabbi Meyer Schwartzman, Rabbi Shmuel Polonsky and one Rabbi Zorach Diskin – who lived in Winnipeg in the early 1900s.
“Some of the books offer a glimpse into Jewish history,” Lewis pointed out. There is one, published in 1865 in Warsaw, which he pointed out, includes a paean to Jewish life in Russia.
Censorship was strict in Russia, he explained. You had to satisfy the censors.
Lewis pointed out that trying to figure out the date of printing for some of the books can be challenging. In some cases, he noted, the book may be a copy – and the copyright date may be the date of the publication of the original. In other cases the date is written in Hebrew letters – leaving researchers to have to translate the letters to their numerical equivalent. What was thought to be the oldest book in the collection, for example, and which was originally estimated to date back to 1819, on further study was determined to be published in 1918.
Lewis also delved into the artwork in some of the books. With the Jewish injunction against recreating human images or those of angels or heavenly bodies, one book in the collection does have a scene where angels are watching as Moses hold the ten commandments and light is streaming from his head.
Another has a scene with Moses and Aaron opposite each other with lions overhead and Roman numerals also in the picture – an example, Lewis suggested of cross cultural influences.
Other popular scenes include the hands of the Cohen doing the priestly blessing The print design and layout can also offer opportunity for artistic flair.
Lewis further note that some of the machzorim have prayers inserrted in Yiddish – for instance, asking for good health – or a good life – or a prayer for one who is ill.
Incidentally, for readers with older Yiddish books at home who are considering trying to find a new home for them, Lewis is one of a handful of Winnipeggers who are collecting Yiddish books for transfer to the Yiddish Book centre in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The book centre,, he reports, is dedicated to finding good homes for such books in university libraries, or the homes of other scholars or other private homes. “A lot of younger people,” he said, “are rediscovering Yiddish and writing songs and poems in Yiddish.”
As to the Chevra Mishnayes’ library, Lewis observed that, as is the case with many other modern shuls, there has not been much interest in more recent years in studying Talmud and Torah.
“Some of the older books are crumbling,” he reported. “Perhaps we should form a committee to cull some of the books that we don’t need and look into ways to better preserve the remainder.
Readers with Yiddish books they no longer want can contact Justin lewis at justin_lewis@umaniotoba.ca
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Representatives from The New Israel Fund of Canada come to Winnipeg to speak to Winnipeg audience
By BERNIE BELLAN In 1977, Menachem Begin became Prime Minister of Israel when his Likud Party was able to form a very narrow coalition with two other parties, thus ending 29 years of dominance by Israel’s Labor Party.
That event set in motion a series of changes to Israel’s political, social, and economic landscapes that are still reverberating to this day.
In reaction to the strongly conservative tilt of Begin’s government – which threatened to undo many of the democratic underpinnings of what Israel’s founders had attempted to achieve when Israel became a state in 1948, a group in California created what was known as the New Israel Fund. According to Wikipedia, “The New Israel Fund was established in 1979 in California and is credited with seed-funding ‘almost every significant cause-related progressive NGO in Israel’. Since its inception the fund has provided over US$250 million to more than 900 organizations. NIF states that while its position is that ‘Israel is and must be a Jewish and democratic state’ it says it was among the first organizations to see that civil, human and economic rights for Israeli Arabs is an issue crucial to the long-term survival of the state.’ “
In 1986, The New Israel Fund of Canada was established as a separate entity, with full charitable status in Canada. Since that time, “NIFC has contributed over $10 million to more than 100 organizations in Israel that fight for socio-economic equality, religious freedom, civil and human rights, shared society and anti-racism, Palestinian citizens, and democracy itself,” according to information taken from the NIFC website.
On Wednesday, December 11, two representatives of the New Israel Fund of Canada who were in Winnipeg spoke to a small group of individuals who braved a bitterly cold night to attend an information session held in the basement of Temple Shalom.
Those two individuals were: Michael Mitchell, a former Winnipegger and a longtime member of the board of NIFC; and Ben Murane, the executive director of NIFC. It was the first ever visit for Murane to Winnipeg and he said that one of the reasons he came here was to help make the work that NIFC has been doing in Israel more widely known to Winnipeggers.
Michael Mitchell introduced himself to the audience, saying that “the person who introduced me to the The New Israel Fund was (the late) Vivian Silver” (who, most readers are no doubt aware, was killed in the October 7 massacre).
Mitchell explained that the The New Israel Fund started “in the 1980s in a very small way, funding certain groups as the problems in Israeli society grew more severe.”
The New Israel Fund of Canada adheres very closely to the rules set out by the CRA for Canadian charities, he said. “We have agents in Israel supervising our projects.”
“NIF in Israel has an international board,” Mitchell noted, including Palestinians and representatives from NIF from other countries.
“NIF has money; they’re nimble, they’re quick,” Mitchell said, “to take nascent Israeli organizations and bring them along.”
NIF “has become much more sophisticated these past five years,” he suggested.
He cited as an example of how effective NIF has been in advancing the work of various Israeli peace groups the drastic decline in violence within Israel itself this past year between Jews and Palestinians, as opposed to what followed in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre, when communities like Lod were riven by violent clashes between Israeli Jews and Arabs.
“If you’re in the middle of a war then you have to tamp down the violence between Jews and Palestinians,” Mitchell said. And a lot of the reasons for the decline in that kind of violence is attributable to the work done by organizations funded by NIF, he suggested.
Where NIF has achieved particular success, he continued, “is in organizing on the ground if you’re opposed to the messianic tendencies of the current Israeli government.”
“There’s a much bigger audience – both in Israel and abroad, that wants to see progressive goals achieved,” Mitchell argued.
As for where The New Israel Fund of Canada stands, Mitchell noted that “the Canadian Jewish community is going through what the American and British communities went through 15 years ago, which is to stop waiting for mainstream organizations to represent them.” A lot of new groups have been formed, he noted, such as “Women Wage Peace” and “Stand Together,” both of which helped to sponsor the December 11 event.
“Canadian Jews are not more conservative about Israel than American Jews,” Mitchell suggested, referring to the results of a survey of Canadian Jews for which NIFC was one of the sponsors. (For more on this turn to https://jewishpostandnews.ca/wjn/news-from-syria-shouldnt-distract-from-whats-been-going-on-in-gaza/.)
“There are at least 100,000 Canadian Jews who agree with us completely but are quiet because they don’t want to rock the boat.”
Ben Murane followed Mitchell, giving a lengthy presentation during which he fully outlined what the NIF is all about. He began by noting that “I am also making a pilgrimage to the place that made Vivian.”
Murane was just a youngster when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, he said. “A lot of the stuff I had heard about Israel – about how great it was, wasn’t quite true,” he noted.
Referring to the most recent Likud victory that returned Netyanyahu to the prime ministership in 2022, Murane said: “Let’s flash backward – a government got elected by a slim margin and announced a grand vision for rewriting Israel’s democracy. It was the first wave of what became a global populism.
“We (the NIF) started investing more in Israeli democracy projects.”
Two years ago, Murane reminded the audience, “hundreds of thousands of Israelis were on the streets” protesting what was then the Likud government’s attempt at judicial overhaul – which would have severely limited the power of Israel’s Supreme Court to intervene in cases where civil liberties were at stake.
“We (the NIF) were firmly there,” Murane said, helping Israeli civil liberties organizations to fight back at what the government was attempting to do.
Then, with the events set in motion by the October 7 massacre, Murane observed: “We knew what would happen. They (the Likud-led coalition) would use what happened as an excuse to advance the rest of their agenda.”
But, what happened after October 7 was the almost complete disappearance of many of the structures that held together Israeli civil society, Murane suggested.
Families were forced to evacuate from their homes near the Gaza Strip – with no support given by the government. Instead, groups that had sprung up in 2022 in response to the government’s attempted judicial overhaul stepped in to provide basic supports to those families, with food and housing. The NIF provided funding for many of those groups.
Something else soon became apparent after October 7, Murane said. “It was immediately obvious that the government didn’t care about the hostages…They weren’t their people.” (Many of the hostages came from kibbutzim that were strongly socialist in their orientation and not at all supportive of the right wing government coalition.)
In fact, Murane observed, within Israel’s current political atmosphere, the only opposition to the government is coming from “the organized support for the hostages.”
Something else Murane pointed out about the aftermath to October 7 is that “it wasn’t just Jews hurt on October 7.” There were members of other groups taken hostage, including Thai and Filipino workers, also Arab Bedouins.
The NIF has helped to provide support for evacuees ever since October 7, including to joint Jewish-Arab distribution centres that “have provided aid on a daily basis,” Murane noted.
“It is not Jew against Arab,” he said. “It is those who believe in life as opposed to those who believe in death…We will take care of each other. We will be the first to help civil society deliver aid.”
Murane suggested that there are several key components to what the NIF is attempting to do in Israel, including “pushback, partnership and peace.”
By “pushback,” he meant, pushing back at the narrative that the Netanyahu-led coalition has developed, which is that the hostages will not return until Hamas totally accedes to the demands put forward by the Israeli government.
“Freeing the hostages is a political matter,” he suggested. “The hostage families have been saying to Jews in the Diaspora: ‘If you want to support the hostages, then Bibi has to step down.’ “
As for “partnership,” Murane explained that “there are still many Jewish and Palestinian people who will stand together and find common cause.” He referred to groups such as “Omidm B’yachad” (standing together), whose members have been “protecting trucks bringing aid to Gaza” from Israelis who had been trying to stop those trucks from entering Gaza.
“We want to keep that flame of partnership alive,” Murane said.
He noted that on Yom Hazikaron (Remembrance Day in Israel) over “6,000 Jews and Arabs came together in one place to show compassion for one another.”
When it comes to “peace,” Murane pointed to the example of World Central Kitchen (an organization receiving funding from the NIF), which has been providing food to Palestinians in Gaza. Helping that group is “an act of morality showing people around the world Zionists giving support to their neighbours.”
Insofar as the road to peace is concerned, Murane suggested that “there are ways out of this mess.” He noted that the idea for the Abraham Accords, in which Israel signed peace agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan, in 2020, was actually first advanced by an Israeli peace group known as “MITVIM.”
Murane posited that a “reinvigorated Palestinian Authority” is one component that would lead to advancing the peace process, but “of course the Israeli government doesn’t want to hear about that.”
The NIF has been active in supporting many different Israeli peace groups, Murane noted, including “Breaking the Silence,” which is made up of IDF veterans who want to draw attention to what Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is truly like.
“The way out of this mess is not going to come from the government,” Murane suggested. “It’s going to come from civil society.”
Yet, time is short, he said. There will be another election in Israel within the next year or two. “We have two to three years to see who will win the civil war in Israel: the annexationist camp or the pro-democracy camp,” he said.
To that end, the NIF has greatly increased funding for many Israeli human right groups, Murane noted. (In 2023, the NIF provided $19 million in funding to over 234 different organizations in Israel, of which $1 million came from The New Israel Fund of Canada.)
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