Features
A tale of two streets that proved to be very attractive for Jewish families in years gone by
By BERNIE BELLAN Any longtime reader of this paper would know that nostalgia is a recurring theme in much of what you’re going to find in the pages of The JP&N (or on this website – as the case may be). We print stories about the history of our Jewish community here on a regular basis – and those stories usually elicit a flurry of responses from readers, often telling us what we got wrong!
Every once in a while we receive an email from someone asking us whether we can supply information about an individual or a particular story from the past. While we do maintain a digital archive on our own website, it has gaps in it as a result of the poor quality of many of the microfilms that were used to produce our archive.
Luckily, the Jewish Heritage Centre has now developed a much more comprehensive digital archive of all Jewish newspapers that may have existed in Winnipeg at one time or another. To be honest, I find it a little difficult to navigate their archive, but if you persevere, it does have a vast repository of priceless information about the history of our Jewish community.
We’re also lucky to have our very own chronicler of days gone by in the person of Gerry Posner. Six years ago Gerry wrote what proved to be a very popular story about one block of McAdam Avenue – that was populated almost entirely by Jewish families at one time.
Recently we were contacted by Shael Glesby, who wrote that he was looking for an article that appeared in the 1949 issue of The Jewish Post and which told the story how the street in East Kildonan where Shael grew up had first begun to be developed in the late 1940s. The thought occurred to me that juxtaposing the stories of the two streets might be interesting for our readers – even if the memory of Gerry’s McAdam Avenue story is still fresh in some of your minds.
Bredin Drive – one of the most beautiful streets in all of Winnipeg was a magnet for Jewish families in the late 40s and early 50s
Before the late 1940s there were very few Jews living in East Kildonan, but according to Shael Glesby some developers had the notion that by building what were then considered to be very upscale homes, the area could attract Jews who were thinking of moving from the north end.
As it turned out, the one street that fulfilled those developers’ dreams somewhat was beautiful Bredin Drive, which was bisected by another beautiful street that also became home to several other Jewish families.
Alas, other than those two streets, according to Shael, there was only a smattering of other Jewish families in East Kildonan. Shael suggested that the new area of south River Heights, which was also being developed starting in the 1950s, proved to be much attractive for young upwardly mobile Jewish families.
We were sufficiently interested by Shael’s email to want to read the article for which he had been searching. We did find it on the Jewish Heritage Centre website – and offer it here for your interest. Note the references by the writer of the article to the appearances of the women who lived on Bredin Drive whom she interviewed. How times have changed.
Here’s the article, from the November 17, 1949 Jewish Post:
“Bredin Drive Boasts City’s Newest Homes”
The following interesting account of some of Winnipeg’s newest homes appeared in a Winnipeg Tribune write-up by Lilian Gibbons in he Aug. 27 edition. – The Editor
Opposite the East Kildonan municipal office is a new housing development that has brought into the light a little secluded street hidden away for years. Bredin Drive today is U-shaped, with the loop on Red River and the arms ending in Henderson Highway; up the centre of the U comes Roosevelt Place with six new houses. For years the north arm of the U has been known as Bredin Drive, a tucked away retreat with a few houses on it. Old and new, the houses now number 26. The south arm is Elmwood Park, opposite the Roxy Theatre.
The smart new street is cut out of two old river-fronted farms, A. R. Bredin’s and Daniel Hamilton’s. Mr. Bredin lived in the big frame house with the verandahs which is now the municipal office of East Kildonan. Then he moved away to Muskegan, Michigan.
The biggest house is 300, the Max Freeds, built two years ago last April. For a long time it looked deserted there on the river. Now it has many neighbours. The house is of white colonial siding and rubble, with a big overhanging roof, a sweep of lawn with lifelike pelicans, and on the river side a patio with awnings, a glass pleasure house near the water. Pretty young Mrs. Freed is still coping with these amenities, matching lime green drapes to grey broadloom and taking care of two babies.
The first two houses, next to the park and the highway, 200 and 210, are the homes of William Wolchock and Cecil Smith, business partners in building. It was blond young Sidney Wolchock who received the reporter. “Gee, it must take a long time to write a whole street. No, I didn’t know the Municipal Office was the Bredin farm home but I do know it won’t be there much longer. My father is building blocks there.”
Opposite is a bungalow of wide siding the color of new green apples, No. 201, home of J. B. Wolk. “We have no stove yet, only a hot plate, but isn’t it nice?” Friendly Mrs. Wolk invited the reporter in.” Five weeks ago today we moved in.”
No. 245 and 255 are another pair very alike, with the popular pink rubble stone at the entrance. Max Ratner built both, lives in the first, and will sell the second; the relative for whom he intended it can’t come to Winnipeg. No. 265 and 275, another pair, are the homes of brothers Ben Billinkoff and J. B. Billinkoff, who are building wreckers.
At the top of the middle street, 198 and 190 Roosevelt Place, are a pair of big square homes, M. Gutkin’s and A. Akman’s. Mrs. Gutkin was sitting on the steps with her mother and rocking her baby daughter’s carriage. “We’re pioneers,” she said stoutly. “We were here when there were only four houses. Linda was born here – she’s a native.”
Mrs. A. J. Averbach, at 330, is the sister of Mrs. Akman, 190 Roosevelt Place.
There are many new building materials displayed in these new homes; for instance, glass for door side-lights. Sometimes it’s fluted like Venetian blinds; sometimes criss-crossed like gingham. The young women are as good looking as the homes they occupy.
(Interestingly, on the same pages as the article appeared ads for mirrors, venetian blinds, and lamps. The article, however, never mentioned whether permission had been obtained from the Tribune to reprint its article.)
As a follow-up to the original email that I received from Shael Glesby, I asked him whether he could remember the names of all the families that lived on Bredin Drive when he was growing up there in the 1960s?
Here’s what Shael wrote back:
255 – Ratner (Max and Helen)
265 – Glesby (Bert & Silvia) original owners were Billinkoffs (Ben & Yetta)
275 – Billinkoff (Joe & Ann)
285 – Gobuty (James & Rae)
210 – Snaper (Mark & Ethel)
250 – Brownstein (Vicki)
260 – Wolchock (Bill & Rose)
300 – Freed (Max & Marion)
310 – Billinkoff (Ben & Yetta) after selling 265.
320 – Bellan (Sam & Marjorie)
There were 3 more Jewish families just north of 320, but I don’t know which houses were owned by which.
Swartz
Averbach
Jacobson
On Roosevelt Place:
Cristall
Duchon
Gutkin
Mrs. Tallman (I believe that Lorelei formerly Brenda, Bellan lives there now. Ed. note: Shael is correct.)
On Henderson Highway, just north of Bredin:
Tallman – Harvey & Louise (newer home built in the 60’s, I think)
Mrs. Tamara Wiseman – Vice Principal/ Principal of Talmud Torah.
There were other Jewish families scattered in the area.
Hespeler – Shore (Ben & Ruth)
Glenwood – Pukin
Streets unknown – Glass (Norm’s family), Moglove, Kaufman (Lala’s family)
See next story for a story about yet another street that almost totally Jewish at one time
Features
The Torah on a Lost Dog: Hashavat Aveidah in a Modern Canadian City
A neighbour’s dog wanders into your yard on a Wednesday morning in May, dragging a leash and looking confused. You have a choice. You can close the door and assume someone else will deal with it, call the city, or take a photo, knock on a few doors, and try to find out where he belongs.
For most people in Winnipeg and elsewhere in Canada, that choice plays out in a flash of moral instinct rather than reflection. The hand reaches for the phone and the walk around the block begins. The neighbour, if it goes well, is at the door before lunch. The decision feels minor, but it matters more than it looks.
In Jewish tradition, the act of returning a lost animal sits at the centre of one of the oldest practical commandments in the Torah. Deuteronomy 22, near the end of Parashat Ki Teitzei, contains a passage that has become the foundation for an entire body of Jewish ethical law: “If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep going astray, you shall not hide yourself from them; you shall surely bring them back.” The verse goes on to extend this duty beyond animals to any lost property. “So shall you do with every lost thing of your brother’s which he has lost and you have found.” Then comes the line that has occupied rabbis for two thousand years: “You may not hide yourself.”
The Hebrew name for this mitzvah is hashavat aveidah, the returning of a lost thing. It is one of the more practical commandments in a tradition full of practical commandments, and the rabbinic literature surrounding it is unusually thick.
A small commandment with big implications
The reason hashavat aveidah occupies so much rabbinic attention is that, on closer reading, it sets a high ethical bar. The Talmud, particularly the second chapter of tractate Bava Metzia known as Eilu Metziot, devotes pages to questions a modern reader would immediately recognize. How long must you wait for the owner to claim the item? How hard do you have to look for them? What if the animal needs feeding while you search? What expenses can you recover, and what counts as fair? What if the item is too inconvenient to safely return?
The rabbis answer all of these. The answers are not always intuitive. The finder is obligated to feed and shelter the animal while looking for the owner. The animal must not be put to work for the finder’s profit. The owner, when found, repays reasonable costs but is not on the hook for unreasonable ones. If the search takes too long, there are procedures for what to do next, none of which involve quietly keeping what is not yours.
Underneath the legal detail is a moral assumption that is easy to miss in a hurried reading. The Torah does not say to return the animal if it is convenient. It explicitly forbids the act of hiding yourself, of pretending you did not see, of crossing to the other side of the street. The commandment is as much about the person who finds as it is about the animal that is lost.
What this looks like in 2026
Most people who encounter a stray dog in a Winnipeg neighbourhood today are not thinking about Bava Metzia. They are thinking about whether the dog is friendly, whether they should call the City, whether they have time. The instinct to help is usually present. The question is what to do with it.
The practical infrastructure for hashavat aveidah in this country has changed considerably in the last decade. A finder in Winnipeg in 2026 has access to a regional humane society, a network of local Facebook groups, neighbourhood newsletters, and a handful of national platforms that gather sightings and missing-pet alerts across more than 180 Canadian cities. The mechanism is straightforward. A clear photo and a location pin can reach the right owner within hours when the system works, which it usually does.
The most underused of these resources, in any community, is the simple act of posting a sighting. Many people who find a stray feel they need to first catch the animal, find it food, take it home, or in some way solve the problem in full. The rabbis would actually disagree with that framing, and so does modern pet-recovery practice. The first responsibility is to make the sighting visible. The owner is almost certainly already looking. The finder’s main job is to surface what they have seen.
For people in Winnipeg looking for a place to start, a practical guide for what to do when you find a stray walks through the basic steps. Take a clear photo, note the cross-streets and time, check for a tag, and post the sighting where local owners will see it. The work is small. The effect, on the owner who has been awake for two nights and then sees a photo of their dog with a phone number underneath, is much larger than the work itself.
The ethical centre of the commandment
There is a strain of Jewish thought that reads hashavat aveidah as a kind of training in noticing. The deeper commandment goes beyond returning what is lost. It asks the finder to be the kind of person who sees what is lost in the first place, who does not cross to the other side of the street, who does not pretend not to have noticed.
That reading lines up with another Jewish ethical concept that often gets paired with this one: tza’ar ba’alei chayim, the obligation to prevent unnecessary suffering to animals. The Talmud derives this principle from several places in the Torah, including the rest commanded for animals on Shabbat. The two principles overlap in the case of a lost pet. The animal is suffering. The owner is suffering. The finder is, briefly, the only person in the position to do anything about it.
In a small way, the entire Canadian volunteer ecosystem around lost pets, from neighbourhood Facebook groups to national platforms to the dog walker who recognizes a posted photo, is an example of this ethical structure in action. People do not necessarily think of it in those terms. The framework is there anyway, doing its quiet work.
A community-scale point
Winnipeg’s Jewish community has always understood itself as a network of responsibilities to others, the kind that get described as chesed when they are visible and assumed when they are not. The work of returning a lost animal sits comfortably in that frame. It is not heroic, does not make the bulletin, and is exactly the kind of small obligation that knits a community together when nobody is paying attention.
The dog in the yard on a Wednesday morning in May, leash trailing, is one version of the question Deuteronomy asks. The answer, then and now, is the same. Do not hide yourself.
Features
Basketball: How has Israel become one of the best basketball countries in Europe in the last few years?
When Israeli Deni Avdija became the first Israeli to be drafted as the highest Israeli draftee in NBA history in 2020 – then emerged as a key NBA wing in Portland, it was not so much the breakthrough it appeared to be, but a portent of things to come. Israeli basketball development has been decades in the making, and in recent years its clubs have made Europe take notice.
This is why Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv, and the national basketball team of Israel are now the subjects of serious discussion in European basketball. It is only natural that fans and bettors reading form, depth of the roster, and momentum would look at our Euroleague predictions and then evaluate how Israeli teams would fit into the continental picture.
A rich history: The Maccabi Tel Aviv mythos
The contemporary narrative dates back to before Avdija. Maccabi Tel Aviv won its maiden European Cup in 1977, beating Mobilgirgi Varese and providing a nation under pressure with a sporting icon. Tal Brody’s declaration: “We are on the map” became not just a quote, it became a declaration of Jewish confidence, Israeli strength and a basketball dream.
Maccabi turned out to be the team of the nation since it bore Israeli identity past the borders. Maccabi has been a cultural ambassador before globalization transformed elite lists into multinational conundrums. Its yellow jerseys were the symbol of excellence, rebellion, and identification for the Israeli people at home and Jewish communities abroad.
The six European championships for the club provided a benchmark that has influenced the Winner League and Israeli basketball. Children were not just spectators of Maccabi, they dreamed of Europe as something accessible. Coaches studied in the continental competition. Sponsors and broadcasters realized that basketball had the potential to be the most exportable Israel team sport.
The modern pillars of Israeli basketball’s success
The recent ascendancy of Israel is no magic. It is the result of history, astute recruiting, youth-building and pressure-tested league culture. The nation has made its size its strength: clubs find talent at a young age and enhance the potential with foreign professionals.
Nurturing homegrown talent: The Deni Avdija effect
The most obvious example is that of Avdija. He was a high-ranking contributor in the system of Maccabi Tel Aviv, was chosen as a teenager, and was picked number 9 by Washington in the 2020 NBA Draft. His career was a reminder that an Israeli prospect could be more than a local star; he could be a lottery pick with two-way NBA potential.
Israeli NBA player Omri Casspi had already opened that door, and Avdija opened it even further for the next generation. Their achievements captivated the expectations of youthful players in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Holon, Herzliya, etc. An Israeli teenager is now able to envision a path from youth leagues to the Winner League, the EuroLeague, and ultimately – NBA minutes.
It is that dream that has been followed by investment. Israeli clubs put more emphasis on skills training, strength training, and analytics, as well as international youth tournaments. The success of the national program in the face of the best of Europe has also helped.
A global approach: The role of international and naturalized stars
The other pillar of the Israeli basketball program is the openness of Israel to global talent. The Winner League has been an important destination, not a stopover, for American guards and forwards. Most come in with NCAA or G league experience and become leaders due to the fact that the league requires scoring, speed and tactical flexibility.
It is enriched with naturalized players and Jewish players, who are able to use the Law of Return to come to Israel to play. Inspired by legendary players like Tal Brody, current imports who can bond both professionally and personally with Israelis have provided teams with uncharacteristic diversity in their rosters. The outcome has been a mixture of Israeli competitiveness, American shot making, Balkan toughness, and European spacing.
Making waves in Europe: Israel’s modern Euroleague footprint
Even in challenging seasons, Maccabi Tel Aviv has remained the flagship team. Currently, Maccabi is out of a playoff spot in the EuroLeague, but Hapoel Tel Aviv has shot up in playoff discussion. That juxtaposition speaks volumes: Israel is no longer represented by one lone, iconic club. Its profile has expanded.
Nevertheless, it is true that the reputation of Maccabi in the EuroLeague does count. Menora Mivtachim Arena in Tel Aviv is one of the most intimidating arenas for EuroLeague teams to play in: loud and emotional. Recent security and travel realities have affected the usual home-court advantage but the name of the club is still a potent brand.
It is the reason why there is an interesting betting discussion within Israeli teams. The name Maccabi still retains a historical impact, but analysts also need to quantify the present defensive performance, injuries, substitution of venues and guards, and fatigue in the schedule. The emergence of Hapoel has provided another Israeli point of reference and markets have to regard the nation as a multi-club force.
What’s next? The future of Israeli basketball on the world stage
Sustainability is the second test. The Israeli national basketball team desires more serious EuroBasket performances and a future world cup. It requires Avdija types – fit and powerful, more domestic big men, and guards capable of playing elite defense to get there.
The pipeline is an optimistic one. Israeli schools are more professional, teams are bolder with young talents, and the Winner League is a test ground where potential talents have to contend with older, tougher imports each week. Not all players will turn into an Avdija, yet additional players ought to be prepared to participate in EuroCup, EuroLeague, and even NBA games.
To the Jews in the Canadian diaspora, the impact is not only sporting, it is also emotional. Israeli basketball brings pride, drama and a common language to the continents. To the European fan, it provides tempo, creativity and unpredictability. To analysts, it provides a sign that a small nation, with memory, ambition and adaptation, can rise to become a true basketball power. Israel has ceased to be the unexpected guest on the table of Europe. It is a part of it, season after season.
Features
In recent years, we have been looking for something more than a house in Israel – we have been looking for a home
For many Jewish families in the diaspora, Israel has always been more than a destination. It is the land of tefillah, memory, family history and belonging. But in recent years, many families have begun asking a practical question too: should Israel also become a place where we have a home?
Not necessarily immediate aliyah. Sometimes it begins with a future option, something good to have just in case, or simply roots with a stronger connection to Eretz Yisroel.
But what does it mean?
A Jewish home is shaped not only by what is inside the front door, but by what surrounds it: neighbours, synagogues, schools, parks, local services, safe streets and the rhythm of Jewish life. For observant families, these are not small details. They are the things that turn a house into a place of belonging.
This is not a new idea. It is a need that has helped shape Jewish communities in Israel before. The Savyonim idea is rooted in the story of Savyon, the Israeli community established in the 1950s by South African Jews who wanted to create a green, safe and community-minded environment in Israel. It was a diaspora dream translated into life in the Jewish homeland.
That idea feels relevant again today. Many Jewish families abroad are now making plans around where they can feel connected in the years ahead.
Recent figures point in the same direction. Reports based on Israel’s Ministry of Finance data showed that foreign residents bought around 1,900 homes in Israel in 2024, about 50% more than the previous year, with Jerusalem emerging as the most popular place to buy. In January 2026, foreign residents still purchased 146 homes, broadly similar to January 2025, even as the wider housing market remained cautious.
For Lior David, International Sales & Marketing Manager at Africa Israel Residences, part of the continued interest may lie in the fact that today’s residential projects are increasingly built around the wider needs of Jewish families abroad: not only buying a property in Israel, but finding a setting that can support community, continuity and everyday Jewish life. That idea is reflected in Savyonim, the company’s residential concept, which places the surrounding environment at the heart of choosing a home.
This can be seen in Savyoney Givat Shmuel, where the surrounding environment includes synagogues, parks, educational institutions, local commerce, playgrounds and transport links, and in Savyoney Ramat Sharet in Jerusalem, located in one of the city’s established green neighbourhoods.
For families abroad, these things matter. Jerusalem and Givat Shmuel are never just another location. They are home to strong Jewish communities, established religious life and surroundings that allow a family to imagine not only buying property, but building a Jewish home in Israel.
Together, these projects reflect a broader understanding: that for many Jews in the diaspora, the decision to create a home in Israel is not only practical, but rooted in identity, continuity and community. The Savyonim story began with a Zionist community from abroad that succeeded in building a real home in Israel; today, that same vision continues in a contemporary form.