Local News
Why are so many people in Winnipeg afraid to go on the record when it comes to my covering them?
By BERNIE BELLAN I guess that my reputation as someone who is willing to go behind the scenes to try and find out what’s really happening within the Jewish community has led, in many cases, to people – or entire organizations, clamming up when it comes to being willing to talk to me.
You might have read my story about the incident at the Asper Campus, during which one individual, Marty Green, was arrested by members of the Winnipeg Police Service, apparently for “disturbing the peace.”
Despite repeated attempts to elicit an explanation from the WPS how exactly Marty was disturbing the peace, no one in WPS has responded to my requests for information.
Let’s face it: the WPS is in the uncomfortable position of having to be seen as “doing something” about the nervousness that many members of our Jewish community feel about the dangers that come with doing things that we used to take for granted we could do in peace and security, such as attending synagogue, sending kids to Gray Academy, or going into the Asper Campus.
So, when one lone individual seems to be behaving in an odd manner – walking around in front of the campus, holding out leaflets – well, it alarms many individuals. One can assume many of those individuals complained to our Jewish Federation, perhaps to B’nai Brith as well. (I did see Ruth Ashrafi, Regional Director for B’nai Brith Manitoba, talking to two policemen around the time that Marty was arrested.)
But – it’s now part of a pattern of Jewish organizations – and leading individuals within our community – joining the trend to suppress freedom of speech.
In my particular case, I often send emails to individuals asking for comment about a particular issue that has been brought to my attention. Rather than responding with a “no comment” response, lately the trend has been not to issue any response at all.
Further, in two cases within the past month, when speakers have been been made aware that I would be in the audience when they were speaking, I was told beforehand that I was not to report on what they were going to say.
And – here’s a really surprising result when I asked to see a transcript of a particular speaker’s remarks, when that speaker had appeared at an event held in the Berney Theatre on September 2. His name was Jeffrey Herf. His talk was publicly advertised by the Rady JCC as “The History Behind Today’s Headlines – A timely conversation about Israel, history, and the events shaping our world.”
I didn’t attend Herf’s talk, but I was told by someone who did attend that he was quite interesting and he wondered why no one from the Jewish Post had been there to cover the talk. That same person said that the was pretty sure the talk had been recorded.
So, I contacted Laura Marjovsky, Director of Programming at the Rady JCC, on September 15, to ask whether there had been a recording of Herf’s talk and, if there was one, could I get a copy?
Laura responded (on Sept. 16): “I’ll have to get back to you on the recording. I’ll need approval in getting that released.”
I bumped into Laura more recently and asked her whether there’s been any movement on that request, but she said she hadn’t heard anything yet. That’s almost two weeks now, so it doesn’t seem likely that she’s going to get permission to release a recording of Herf’s talk to me.
What’s particularly strange is that you can do a search for Jeffrey Herf and find all sorts of instances where he’s been interviewed and his talks have been covered by various media. Maybe he was worried that if I wrote a report about his talk I wouldn’t be fair or accurate in reporting what he had to say, but I hadn’t told Laura that I wanted to write about Herf’s talk. I just wanted to know whether I could get a recording of his talk. In many instances I’ve transcribed speeches – or interviews, and printed them verbatim.
But, in this case, it appears Jeffrey Herf doesn’t want anything written about his talk here. I wonder why that is?
Then, there were two further instances of speakers asking that their remarks go unreported. Both instances occurred at the Gwen Secter Centre – at Remis Speakers’ luncheons. (By the way, the luncheons have seen record attendances this year. Kudos to Simone Cohen Scott for bringing in such an interesting range of speakers. If you’ve never been to a Remis luncheon but might be interested in having a great – and kosher lunch, followed by hearing an interesting speaker – all the while being able to socialize with friends, you really ought to give it a try.)
The first instance was when Prof. Bryan Schwartz, who is now a rabbi as well as a lawyer and professor, gave a talk about Torah commentaries. Why Bryan didn’t want anything written about something as innocuous as Torah commentaries is beyond me, but that was his prerogative.
The second instance was more frustrating for me. It was when Anita Wortzman, president of the Asper Foundation, was speaking about the Asper Foundation’s philanthropic endeavours. Again, Anita had also asked that there be no reporting of her remarks.
Yet, I found what she had to say quite interesting – and she delivered her remarks so clearly in such an organized manner that I was prompted to ask Anita for an interview, during which, I suggested, she could describe the Asper Foundation’s work. I emailed Anita asking her whether she would be willing to sit for an interview but, rather than responding with a rejection, I received no response at all. So, I emailed her again. Still no response.
And then there’s an interesting situation that had been brought to my attention about a policy of Congregation Etz Chayim’s of which I was not aware.
The policy involves who would be entitled to officiate at a funeral held at one of the three cemeteries managed by CEC: The Rosh Pina, Bnay Abraham, and Hebrew Sick cemeteries.
In June 2025 Rabbi Kliel Rose emailed various rabbis and several other individuals about Etz Chayim’s policy re outside clergy being able to officiate at funerals in any of those cemeteries. The email was titled “Update on CEC Clergy Funeral Policy & New Pre-Approval Process July 25, 2025.”
The wording in the email was somewhat confusing at times. For instance, one line says “All services conducted in the CEC synagogue require the participation of CEC clergy (Rabbi and/or Cantor).” Wouldn’t it stand to reason that services in CEC would require the participation of a member of CEC clergy, I wondered?
Further, it stated that “Requests for outside clergy must be approved by the CEC rabbi.”
But CEC is now without a rabbi, as Rabbi Kliel has left Winnipeg for Ottawa. Who will be able to grant requests for outside clergy in the interim?
Apparently though, what the policy was meant to refer to wasn’t services in the CEC synagogue, it was meant to refer to funerals in CEC administered cemeteries.
As a result, I sent emails to the CEC funeral director, Margot Carr, and CEC Chief Operating Officer Morissa Granove, in which I asked them to clarify CEC’s policy on funerals and outside rabbis being able to officiate at CEC administered cemeteries.
I noted in my email that outside rabbis had previously been allowed to officiate – on their own, at CEC administered cemeteries.
I also noted that I had spoken with individuals who had told me they had wanted a certain rabbi to officiate at their loved one’s funeral, but were told that they had to use one of CEC’s clergy. In certain instances, however, I was also told that when some families absolutely insisted on using an outside rabbi, CEC did relent and allowed them to use an outside rabbi. Thus, one might say CEC’s policy of not allowing outside rabbis to officiate on their own at one of their cemeteries is “honoured more in the breach than the observance,” if a family were to absolutely insist that an outside rabbi be allowed to conduct a funeral at one of CEC’s cemeteries.
The vast majority of funerals in a Jewish cemetery in Winnipeg are conducted at the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery, however, and the Shaarey Zedek has always allowed outside rabbis to officiate at funerals in its cemetery.
CEC’s policy, moreover, was intended to target one particular rabbi in Winnipeg, I further learned. That rabbi received a separate email from Rabbi Kliel informing him that he would no longer be able to officiate, under any circumstances, at a CEC administered cemetery.
As Rabbi Kliel noted in his email, “While we understand some may request your officiation, this will no longer be possible.”
In my emails to Margot Carr and Morissa Granove I suggested that barring a specific rabbi from being able to officiate at funerals in any of their cemeteries would likely prove very painful to many families who would want a particular rabbi to officiate at their loved one’s funeral.
To date I have not received any response to my emails to either Carr or Granove.
So, there you have it: A pattern either of emails going unanswered by the parties to whom they were sent or of being told that I would not be able to report on remarks on particular occasions.
At the very least, one would expect a simple “no comment” in response, but we’re now living in an age when requests from media for information or comment are simply ignored all too often. I guess I have to get used to that.
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.
Local News
Third annual JFest Winnipeg will be offering programs for all ages
By MYRON LOVE JFest Winnipeg is back with a good variety of musical performances, a book launch, popular Jewish-themed films, children’s activities, and a family-oriented Shabbat dinner.
“JFest,” observes Laura Marjovsky, the Rady JCC Director of Programming, “is an opportunity for our community to experience Jewish art and culture. With our range of JFest events, we are trying to reach out beyond what has been our base audience and appeal to all ages. We have a commitment to bring top notch Israeli performers to share the highest caliber of Israeli entertainment with our audiences.”
The week-long festival (November 14-21) kicks off with a performance by top-ranked Israeli singer-songwriter Harel Skaat. The popular Israeli star began singing as a child. He shot to fame when he finished second in the second season of “Kochav Nolad” – Israel’s version of “American Idol.” His first album was released in 2006 and achieved Platinum status – with one of the songs being ranked as “song of the year.” He followed that up in 2009 with a second album that reached Gold status. In 2010, he represented Israel at the Eurovision competition.
Skaat’s performance is scheduled for the Seven Oaks Performing Arts Centre (which is attached to Garden City Collegiate) beginning at 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 14. Patrons will have the opportunity to purchase an enhanced ticket to attend a meet and greet with Harel.
All other JFest programs and activities will be at the Rady JCC.
Music Producer Karla Berbrayer says Ben Caplan’s performance on Saturday, November 21 will also be another highlight. “Ben Caplan redefines what it means to be a modern folk artist,” Berbrayer says. “His music and stories are matched by his larger-than-life stage presence. This concert focuses on how his Jewish upbringing has influenced his entire performance career.”
“Flatland Famous” is returning by popular demand. This quintet, known for its performances at Winnipeg Jets games, will be presenting its concert, “Jewish Soul of Rock and Roll,” on Wednesday, November 18, at 7:30 pm. This year’s show will feature songs by Amy Winehouse, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Simon and Garfinkel, and other famous Jewish icons.
On Tuesday, November 17, local author Deborah Schnitzer will be taking centre stage with the launch of her new book, “The Woman Who Swallowed West Hawk Lake.” The University of Winnipeg English Professor Emeritus’s new novel explores intergenerational trauma related to Nazi breeding programs. Joining Schnitzer on stage will be a panel of professionals who have experience working with children who have experienced trauma.
And of course, “Best of the Fest” is back. Films to be presented will include“The Floaters” and “We Met at Grossingers,” two wildly popular movies at last spring’s Winnipeg International Jewish Film Festival.
“The Floaters,” to be screened on Monday , November 16 at 7:00 pm is a funny and bang-on depiction of Jewish summer camp culture.
“We Met at Grossingers” is a loving look back at the Borscht Belt in New York’s Catskills, where generations of young Jewish performers earned their dues and developed their acts. The film will be screened on Thursday, November 19 at 7:00 P.M.
On Friday November 20, JFest will host a Family Shabbat dinner featuring Anat Kriger, an Israeli-born, Toronto-based musician, actor, and children’s performer, who has made several appearances in Winnipeg at major communal events.
Kidfest on Sunday, November 15, will be a day-long potpourri of programming that will include live performances, workshops, bouncy castles, games and crafts, and much more.
Readers seeking more information about JFest can contact Laura Marjovsky at 204 477-7539 or lmarjovsky@radyjcc/com
WPG Jewish
October 1, 2026 at 1:57 pm
There is something deeply unsettling in our community about those at the top controlling what information gets brought to the public’s attention and who gets to represent the community (yourself included). Makes me wish we had elections for our leadership.