Local News
Winnipeggers recount experiences growing up in smaller communities
By MYRON LOVE “The place we call home,” observed Bruce Sarbit, “ – shtetl, town, city, country – is essential to who we are. We endow the place with personal meaning and it, in turn, provides us with a sense of identity and stability as we adapt to life’s circumstances in a rapidly changing world.”
For many Jewish Winnipeggers of an earlier era, like Sarbit, that sense of identity was first forged in smaller communities throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwestern Ontario where our parents and grandparents – my own father and his family among them – found general acceptance as farmers, merchants and professional people while they also successfully strived to retain their sense of Judaism.
On Sunday, September 28, Sarbit was one of a group of four Winnipeggers who participated as part of the Jewish heritage Centre of Western Canada’s program “Beyond The Perimeter: Jews Outside of Winnipeg”, which was held at Temple Shalom. The four, in addition to Sarbit, were: David Greenberg, Sid Robinovitch and Lil Zentner – who began their lives growing up in Selkirk (for Sarbit), Portage La Prairie, Brandon and Esterhazy (Saskatchewan) respectively. The program grew out of the research conducted by Chana Thau, on behalf of the JHCWC, into Jewish life in smaller communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
In Thau’s introduction, she noted the existence of several Jewish farm colonies that were established in the early years of the last century by German-Jewish Baron de Hirsch. At the same time, other Jewish immigrants (also all from the former Russian empire) to Canada were following the railroad and establishing themselves in the towns and cities that had grown up alongside the rail lines.
In the smaller communities, such as Shoal Lake – where I first lived (we were the only Jewish family) or Esterhazy (where Lil (Bober) Zentner’s family lived with two other Jewish families, the Jewish presence was minimal. In larger communities – such as Brandon, Portage and Selkirk – the number of Jewish families may have been between 20 and 30 at their peaks in the interwar years and into the 1950s. Brandon and Portage had their own synagogues.
The four speakers described many commonalities about Jewish life where they grew up. Their parents were storekeepers. Zentner’s parents, Max and Eva Bober, operated a general store in Esterhazy. Sid Robinovitch’s parents, Jack and Ethel Robinovitch, were proprietors of the Army and Navy Clothing store (which was a separate entity from the Army and Navy chain of stores which were headquartered in Regina, Sid pointed out) in Brandon. Sarbit proudly reports that his family’s Sarbit’s Department Store in Selkirk was, at one time, the largest independent store in western Canada. While David Greenberg’s father, the late I.H. Greenberg, was a lawyer in Portage la Prairie – and David and his brother, Barry, carried on the family legal practice in the community – his grandfather was first a journeyman lather who did plaster work on homes. The family later opened a second-hand store and subsequently constructed a grocery store – Greenberg’s Groceteria.
“The Greenberg grocery store extended credit to farmers and purchased their produce, which enabled it to thrive,” David Greenberg recalled. “I was once told by a friend years later that “Greenberg’s kept us alive” in the winter when they had virtually no money for food.
While the Greenberg, Robinovitch and Sarbit families arrived in Portage, Brandon and Selkirk respectively in the early 1900s – as part of the wave of Jewish immigration from Russia at the time –meaning the three were among the third generations in their communities, Lil Zentner’s parents, Max and Eva Bober were considerable later arrivals – having come to Canada respectively – in 1926 and 1930. They opened their general store in Esterhazy in 1936.
The Bobers, being newcomers, were more observant than Greenberg’s, Robinovitch’s, and Sarbit’s parents. Zentner was the only one of the four speakers who brought up the challenge of keeping kosher in a town far removed from shechita and kosher food. She recounted how her parents brought in kosher meat from Regina.
“We would buy chickens from local farmers,” she recounts. “We would take them to Melville (which numbered perhaps 30-40 Jewish families in the 1930s and 40s) to have them killed and then we would remove the feathers, cut off the heads and clean them at home.”
In Robinovitch’s telling, Jewish religious life in Brandon was “basic”. “We kept kosher in our home,” he remarks. “We brought in kosher meat from Winnipeg. We had a synagogue but, aside from the odd community event, it really only functioned on the High Holidays.”
David Greenberg noted that, for the first couple of decades, the Jewish community’s members davened in people’s homes. Portage’s Jewish community didn’t build a proper synagogue until 1950. Services were largely restricted to Friday evenings and the High Holidays. The merchants had to work on Saturdays. The community also made attempts to have a cheder, but with limited success.
While it would seem (from my own memories as well) that the general communities in those small towns respected the Jewish merchants in their midst – none of the four speakers mentioned any incidents of antisemitism – the Jewish families – even in the already more secular and integrated second and third generations – primarily socialized with other Jewish families.
In Portage – although the Jewish families did largely socialize with each other, the second and third generations also held leadership positions in the larger community. Greenberg noted that Jack Shindelman, Ben Kushner, and Irwin Callen all became aldermen, and Harold Narvey was re-elected chairman of the school board many times.
“My mother served as President of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE),” Greenberg noted, “and as a longtime volunteer at the Portage General Hospital Auxiliary. My father and his brother Allan became Exalted Rulers of the Elks Lodge, My Uncle Michael was leader of the Elks Band.”
In Zentner’s remembering, although she had many non-Jewish friends among the girls in her classes – her parents only got together socially with the other two Jewish families in town or Jewish families in nearby towns.
“In the summers, we would join other Jewish families at Round Lake, vacationing at Round Lake,” she recalled. “One summer, my parents sent me to a Habonim camp in the Qu’Appelle Valley where I met a lot of other Jewish kids.”
“For their social life, my family mixed almost exclusively with other members of Brandon’s Jewish community,” Robinovitch said. “There were Saturday evening poker nights and Sunday afternoon gatherings at Crystal’s Delicatessen. On Saturday afternoons, I would go to the movies and a couple of other Jewish kids in my school and I belonged to the Cubs and Boy Scouts.
“I had a few friends from school, but I always felt that I was different,” Robinovitch continued. “I was aware of being Jewish – although I had no real sense of what Jewishness was all about. I would say that the only time that I had any exposure to Jewish culture was when my parents sent me one summer to Herzl Camp in Wisconsin when I was 12 years old. It was a real eye opener being in an environment with so many other Jewish youngsters. I was exposed to a lot of Hebrew songs and, to this day, I still remember the Birkat Hamazon and V’ahavtah prayers that I learned there.”
The next year, the Robinovitch family moved to Winnipeg and young Sid quickly became immersed in Jewish life here. “In Brandon, I felt that we were defined by what we didn’t do,” he observed. “We didn’t go to school on the High Holidays. We didn’t have a Christmas tree. And we didn’t go to visit grandpa and grandma on the family farm.
“It was in Winnipeg where my identity as a Jew really began to take shape. Brandon was a nice place to live, but it could not provide the strong Jewish community values that emanate from a lager centre. A remnant of Jewish values still prevailed from the shtetl, but by my generation, they had worn thin.”
For Lil Zentner, the end of her time in Esterhazy came when she began dating a local boy. Her parents wouldn’t tolerate it when they found out. After a mighty blow-up, she challenged them to send her to Winnipeg where she could meet fellow Jews. Her older brother, Harold, was already here, going to university. Her parents agreed and they followed a year later.
For the Jewish community in Selkirk, Bruce Sarbit noted, being so close to Winnipeg, it was almost an extension of the larger city. His remarks were as much about nostalgia for Winnipeg as they were about Selkirk. “In my case,” he said, “I came into Winnipeg for everything Jewish – Hebrew lessons. Sunday Jewish history classes and YMHA clubs.”
The smaller city, he observed – at its peak home to perhaps 20 Jewish families, “fostered a strong sense of community among the Jewish families and helped them to hold onto their cultural and religious traditions, celebrate Shabbat, observe holidays, practise kashrut and maintain their Yiddish language as they ran businesses that necessitated interactions with the non-Jewish population”.
He added that his own father, Syd, who came to Portage at the age of three, was immersed in the general community as well – having twice served as president of the Chamber of Commerce, was also a member of the Rotary club, and once ran for election to the Legislature.
Unlike Portage and Brandon, though. Selkirk was close enough that the Jewish residents of Selkirk often drove into Winnipeg, attended High Holiday services here, visited relatives and, in general, partook of the activities, Jewish and otherwise, that the larger city provided.
Unlike Robinovitch and Zentner though, Sarbit did not spend all of his adult life in Winnipeg. He left Selkirk at the age of 18 for Brandon. For 40 years, the psychologist turned playwright served as a counsellor at Brandon University.
“The descendants of the first residents chose not to remain in Portage,” Greenberg concluded – in summing up the decline and disappearance of the other Jewish communities on the Prairies – with the exception of Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon. “Intermarriage was frowned upon and the children were too few in number and not close enough in age to socialize, so for girls to meet Jewish boys they were required to move to alarger centres, primarily Winnipeg. I believe culture was the motivating factor in their decision.
“Only my Uncle, Allan Greenberg, a bachelor, Harold and Mildred Narvey, and their son Bruce, who opened a chiropractic practice, remained. Bruce Narvey, as I mentioned, was the last of the resident descendants, before leaving after his mother died.”
Although Greenberg himself – and his brother, Barry – have lived most of their lives in Winnipeg, they continue to practise law in Portage and have had a history of community involvement in the Portage community. In recent years, David co-chaired the Portage and Area Beautification initiative committee through the Chamber of Commerce, resulting in seven years of service in the planning and implementation of the project. As a result, the committee was awarded its Citizenship of the Year award by the community. As for Barry Greenberg, he is a past president of the Portage & District Chamber of Commerce.
Local News
The shift in the New Democrats
By NOAH STRAUSS The New Democrats have just wrapped up their 2026 national convention here in Winnipeg. While I was at the convention, I noticed a critical change in the party. Under the current NDP leadership the party and partygoers ignored promoting Canadian merchandise, including flags. It’s interesting to compare the party now to what it was when Jack Layton was the leader (from 2003-2011).
Layton was quite proud to be a Canadian. If you attended or saw any of his rallies you would have seen many Canadian flags, both on stage and in the crowd. Comparing Layton’s era to the current moment, not one Canadian flag was on stage at the recent national convention – only a Palestinian flag.
This should be concerning: Only one flag was present – and it wasn’t ours.
The NDP’s views have shifted and so has the membership. Approximately one in twenty people I saw were wearing keffiyehs. I wonder what was their affiliation to Palestine?
Avi Lewis is not helping the situation; he’s just pouring more gas on the fire. In his acceptance speech at the convention he proclaimed once more that he will not remain silent when Israel commits a genocide in Gaza. He had campaign signs that said ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Libérer Palestine,’ both on stage and at his numerous campaign events.
In an email sent out to members of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), an anti-Zionist organization, Lewis noted that he had become a member of that organization, saying “I was also proud to sign IJV’s Together Against Apartheid pledge.”
What does this all mean, though? The NDP have shifted from focusing on Canada and being proud of Canada to supporting a foreign cause and ignoring the facts. Avi Lewis doesn’t care about being Jewish, he cares about getting votes, and if that is what it takes, he’ll tell lies about Israel.
The NDP needs to remember that Canada needs to come first. To the person with the Palestinian flag on the stage: You need to put your Canadian pride first.
If the NDP wants to be seen as a real party, it will put Canada first once again.
Local News
Rachel Fish, leader in combating antisemitism in academia, this year’s Kanee Distinguished Lecture series speaker
By MYRON LOVE The Jewish Heritage Center of Western Canada would seem to have hit another home run with the announcement that Dr. Rachel Fish, a leading voice in tackling anti-Zionism and Jew hatred in North American academia, is this year’s guest speaker at the JHCWC’s upcoming annual Sol and Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecture – which is scheduled for Thursday, April 30, at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue.
The theme of her timely lecture will be“How the Academy Has Created a Fertile Ground for Antisemitism,” a topic in which she is well versed. Fish has an impressive resumé. She is the co-founder of the nonprofit “Boundless,” a think tank partnering with community leaders across North America to revitalize Israel education and take bold collective action to combat antisemitism. She also serves as Director for The Brandeis University President’s Initiative on Antisemitism; is an associate research professor at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies; and teaches Israeli history and society at The George Washington University as Visiting Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
In the past, she has served as Senior Advisor and Resident Scholar at the Paul E. Singer Foundation in New York City and Executive Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, where she trained the next generation of academics in the field of Israel Studies. She has also served on the faculty at Brandeis University, George Washington University, and Harvard University. She has has written articles for several publications in the mainstream press and academic journals, and co-edited the book “Essential Israel: Essays for the 21st Century.”
I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Fish a couple of weeks ago. My first question to her was how she finds the time to do all that she does. Her response is that there are not enough hours in the day. Her multiple activities remind me of an expression I heard once years ago while I was a member of a short-lived Jewish international development group – “if you want to make sure something gets done, you give it to the busiest person you know.”
Fish observes that she has been explaining Judaism to non-Jews all of her life. “I was raised in Tennessee in a place called Johnson City in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains,” she recounts. “My parents were originally from Ohio. There were very few Jews where we lived. My family spent a lot of time teaching our neighbours, teachers in my school and others we associated with about Jews, our practices and the State of Israel.”
She recalls – as early as 2001 when she was studying at Harvard’s Divinity School, that she was noticing what she describes as a “strong undercurrent of anti-Israel feeling and Jew-hatred”.
“I was determined to pursue a career in higher education,” she notes, “in part because I believe that education matters, because I derive oxygen from teaching, and I particularly enjoy dealing with complex issues. As well, I appreciate the opportunities that teaching at the university level gives me to share what I have learned in public forums such as the Kanee Lecture.”
Ideally, she observes, a professor should not – as much as humanly possible – be sharing her political or personal opinions in class. Higher education should be about creating a space where students can debate freely and challenge each other’s ideas. Instead (as I am sure many readers are aware), too many educators are focused on indoctrinating their students in the teacher’s beliefs – with students with dissident opinion facing hostility and risking ostracism.
Too many universities have become ideological monocultures where critical thinking is discouraged and there is a litmus test for new hires. She cites a FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) report in which an overwhelming majority of the faculty at many leading universities share a leftist – anti-Israel, anti-Christian and anti-Conservative worldview.
That is particularly true with Ivy league and other elite universities in both the United States and Canada – and especially in their liberal Arts and Humanities programs. Much of the anti-Zionist and antisemitic atmosphere – such as the takeover of university quadrants in the wake of October 7 – has been created by outside agitators and foreign funders – notably the oil rich Islamic sheikhdom of Qatar.
“Where you have universities with strong administrative leadership,” she points out, “the level of hostility to Jewish students and threats of violence have not been allowed to take root. It has only been the case where the administration and the board are weak.”
So why, I asked her, do so many Jewish students not seek out alternatives to these compromised campuses?. She responded that some Jewish students have chosen to enrol in universities in the southern United States where there is a more welcoming environment.
But many Jewish students, she observes, continue to enrol in leading universities such as Harvard and Yale, Cornell and UCLA (or York or the University of Toronto in Canada). Many Jewish students still share the belief that being identified with being affiliated with a top flight university will benefit their future careers.
Sadly, she further points out, this poison has filtered down to the K-12 level. Many university education departments have graduated numerous indoctrinated teachers who have taken control of school boards and administrations and seek to impose their vile doctrines on susceptible young minds.
Nevertheless, there are a great many state and lesser known universities that provide a more welcoming attitude to Jewish students.
Rachel Fish suggest that, for too long, North American Jewish communities have been complacent and not recognized the danger in our midst. She does see some hopeful signs though. She has observed that more and more communities, parents and student s have woken to the danger and begun to fight back.
“It’s difficult,” she acknowledges. “It can feel overwhelming. But we have to keep chipping away and not just let the other side win.”
The Sol and Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecture series was inaugurated by the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada in 2006 to celebrate Sol Kanee’s 95th birthday. In welcoming the audience to that first lecture, lecture series co-chair Harold Buchwald paid tribute to Kanee, who died on April 23 at 97, as a man who “cast a giant shadow” on world Jewish history in the second half of the 20th century. The former resident of Melville, Saskatchewan, who spent almost all of his adult life in Winnipeg, Kanee was a leader in the development of Israel and the Free Soviet Jewry movement as well as a macher in our Jewish community and across Canada.
I would encourage readers who may be interested in learning more about the current state of antisemitism in academia – and want to support the JHCWC to go online at jhcwc.org for further information or to order tickets. The price of admission is $50.
Local News
Young tech entrepreneur Adam Fainman gathering accolades locally and internationally
By MYRON LOVE Winnipegger Adam Fainman is taking the world by storm. In fewer than three years his new AI start-up – Moonlite Labs – has attracted thousands of users in 550 cities in 95 countries world wide.
As he explained in an interview in the Winnipeg Sun last June, Moonlite Labs is “a creative content platform designed to make multimedia storytelling radically more accessible. With a few prompts,” he noted, “users can generate professional grade videos, animations, voiceovers, talking avatars, music-reactive visuals, and more.”
On Tuesday, February 24, the young entrepreneur garnered his newest accolade when Winnipeg-based North Forge, Canada’s only start-up incubator, accelerator and fabrication lab, gave Fainman its DARE Emerging Innovator Award at a reception at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada.
“I dedicated the award to my zaida, Jacob T. Schwartz,” Fainman says, noting that his zaida was a prominent computer scientist and professor of Computer Science at the New York University Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, and founder, in 1964, of New York University’s Department of Computer Science – which he chaired for 16 years.
At the awards evening, Fainman adds, he had the opportunity to meet many of the movers and shakers in the industry here.
The son of Shane and Rachel Fainman began his life in Toronto. “My father is from Winnipeg, my mother from New York. They met in the Sinai Desert at a music festival.”
The family moved to Winnipeg in 2006 when Adam was in high school. After graduating from the University of Winnipeg Collegiate he went on to earn a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Winnipeg.
“Performing was always my first love” he says.
Post university, he began a career as a rapper, beatboxer, and producer under the stage name Beatox, touring across Canada and central Europe with his rare ability to combine story-telling and singing.
In 2015, he enrolled in a two-year digital media and design program at Red River Community College. After graduation, on the encouragement of a University of Toronto professor, he continued his studies in Toronto earning a Masters Degree in Music Technology and Digital Marketing.
“During the Covid shutdown,” he recounts, “I began experimenting with AI and producing music videos combining music, story-telling and animation. I posted them on social media sites such as YouTube and TikTok. They went viral, garnering millions of views. People were asking me if I could help them with creating similar videos. I saw there was a gap in accessibility to this technology, so I decided I should create a platform as a solution”
“A friend of mine, Brayden Bernstein was involved in the tech scene in Winnipeg, saw the success I was having on TikTok and gave me some advice on how to go about this” Fainman continues. “As well, a few colleagues from the University of Winnipeg expressed interest in building a solution together.”
Wanting to create a platform that would make it easy for others to replicate what he was doing, Fainman sought out resources in Winnipeg that might be able to help him.
He pitched his idea first to NRC-IRAP (National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program), Canada’s leading innovation assistance program for small and medium-sized businesses,
“They loved the concept and traction I was getting, and agreed to help fund us,” Fainman says.
His next stop was North Forge – in 2024 – where Moonlite joined their Ascent Program and was matched with mentors.
In early 2025, Moonlite Labs made its official debut at the Manitoba AI Innovation Showcase where the new company was greeted with an award. “It was a massive confidence boost,” Fainman told the Sun in that earlier interview. “It was our first time sharing with the public what we’ve been up to for the last year. To win the award… that was very, very rewarding.”
Last June, the company made its presence known on the international stage at VivaTech 2025 in Paris — Europe’s largest startup and tech conference, with over 180,000 visitors.
Moonlite was selected as one of TechCrunch’s Top 30 Startups of the Year, a shortlist that included only two Canadian companies.
“Getting the AI Showcase award, getting into VivaTech, being selected as one of the top 30 startups of the Year by TechCrunch, that was pretty crazy,” Fainman told the Sun.“Backed by ScaleAI, Moonlite joined Canada’s official delegation at VivaTech, which had special visibility this year with Canada named Country of the Year at the conference.
“We had a massive space. The French president came through our whole area. It was the craziest thing,” Fainman recalled. “Everyone had their phones. It was like a mob… then we’re like, oh my God, it’s the French president. People were freaking out.”
As per the Sun story, Fainman was given two days to showcase Moonlite, with a booth for both the platform’s business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) offerings. But the most personal moment came on stage, where he delivered a presentation showcasing his journey from beatboxing artist to tech founder.
With Moonlite Labs growing exponentially, Faiman and his team of eight are hoping to become as ubiquitous as Adobe and Canva. “My ultimate goal is to help as many people as possible to create professional-grade videos and ultimately share their stories,” he comments.
He himself, he adds, is hoping to get back to live performances as well. “I recently appeared at Festival du Voyageur and I have just completed my 4th studio album. I can’t wait to use Moonlite for all my videos and world building” he reports.
Readers who might want to try Moonlite for themselves can go to https://moonlitelabs.com
You can get in touch with Adam Fainman at adam@moonlitelabs.com