Features
And now the news – with Laurence Wall
By GERRY POSNER I am betting that many readers will have memories of the Wall family, formerly of Winnipeg, later of Phoenix and Ottawa. For people with long memories like me, (which memories my grandkids define as old ), that means as far back as Dr. Mark and Elsa Wall. The Walls had four sons: Richard, Laurence, Murray and Bruce. Likely, you will know one or more of the boys. Both Richard and Bruce reside in Phoenix, while Laurence and Murray are in Ottawa. Of course, each has a story, but I was certainly taken by the Laurence Wall story.
Born in Montreal in 1954 at a time when his father was doing post graduate work in OBGYN, Laurence grew up in Winnipeg’s south end, on Lanark Street and later Queenston Bay. Wall graduated from Grant Park High School in 1972. From there he was off to the University of Manitoba, where he obtained a BA in 1975. Later that year, he left for Ottawa where he studied journalism at Carleton University, finishing with a Bachelor of Journalism. While at Carleton, he met Roslyn Nudell from Montreal, also a student in the journalism program. They married in 1978.
Wall began his career at the Winnipeg Tribune (and if you can remember the Walls, you’re sure to remember the Tribune). He was a reporter there from 1976-1979. Then he moved to CBC Radio in Winnipeg, first as a story producer for the network program, “Canada Watch,” then a stint as a writer- broadcaster for “ Information Radio”.
In 1983 Wall moved to CBC Saskatoon (much like professional athletes who move from team to team, although for much less remuneration) where he was a radio reporter until 1985. The next stop was at CBC Fredericton from 1985 through 1993. By that time, Wall had moved up to become a senior news editor at the CBC.
In 1993, Wall was hired as a senior editor in Ottawa. He continued in that position for three years. In 1996, he wanted to return to on-air work, so he moved back into the radio booth at CBC Ottawa. He became the afternoon news presenter and never looked back. For 28 years, he wrote and edited dozens of new stories and audio items for 13 different newscasts and news updates every weekday, amassing more than 50,000 newscasts and news updates to his credit.
He retired on May 31, 2024. That day marked the end of an illustrious 44 years with the CBC at four different stations. If you lived in Ottawa, his name was immediately recognizable – so much so that on May 31, 2024, the mayor of Ottawa declared that “ Laurence Wall Day.”
Over the course of his time with CBC in Ottawa, Wall reported on some of the most significant stroies of the day, including the 1998 ice storm; the day to day ups and downs (I think more downs than ups ) of the Ottawa Senators of the NHL; the killing pf Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial in 2014 – and the chaos that followed; and, of course, Covid 19. In fact, Covid caused a major change in the way Wall presented the news. For Wall broadcasts emanated from the basement of his home in suburban Ottawa, which he jokingly referred to as”CBC Nepean.”
Over the years Wall had the opportunity to meet many celebrities, including Gordon Pinsent, Alan Thicke, Ken Dryden, and Eugene Levy. Wall recounts that, although he didn’t manage to get a photo with Levy, he did get a laugh when he introduced himself to Levy as “just the chopped liver news presenter.” He also interviewed Randy Bachman at the Ottawa Writers Festival.
A side of Wall that is not as well known is his musical bent. Since 2001, Wall hosted hundreds of concerts and events for the Ottawa Music Festival, the Music and Beyond Chamber Festival, the Ottawa Jazz Festival, Opera Lyra Ottawa and the Ottawa Writers Festival. He has worked tirelessly to promote classical music for young people. Not to be forgotten are his own talents on the cello as a player in the 65-member community group known as the Divertimento Orchestra.
Aside from all that, Laurence Wall has MC’d dozens of events for various Jewish organizations in Ottawa, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Weizmann Institute, the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship, the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, Limmud Ottawa, his own Kehillat Beth Israel Synagogue, Active Jewish Adults 50+, and a local choir known as Musica Ebraica. Now that is a list of accomplishments that could fill a “ Wall.”
Laurence and Roslyn are also parents of two daughters and are now grandparents as well to one grandson, with another grandchild on the way. Retirement so far for Wall has been just as fulfilling as his career. You might just say that Laurence Wall has just turned another page in his career.
Features
Winnipeg and Israel
La vie se rétracte ou se dilate à proportion de notre courage.
Anaïs Nin (1903 – 1977)
By Dr. DAVID HOULT Israel has come of age among the nations of the world. After almost two thousand years of yearning, it can now join the ranks of those that ply power and pain. It is an odd conceit for most of us, for we imbibed so thoroughly from childhood the notions of Jewish vulnerability, suffering and solidarity, the need for self-sufficiency and circling the wagons when attacked. The foundation of a Jewish state came as the Great Hope, a shining star, the salvation from the wreckage of the Holocaust: a Jewish liberal democracy with a military having sterling and stirring ideals standing alone in a rough Middle-East neighbourhood. It appeared to many to be a miracle, and Judaism intertwined with Zionism and state to create a pinnacle of pride and pilgrimage – a tool of God to promote Their divine scheme, and to initiate the return of the Jews to the land They promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
But now, many of us are troubled. We fear deep down that Israel has gone astray, but are scared to confront the possibility, scared to give The Enemy ammunition if we say anything. So in our pain, we punish those who give even a hint of voicing dissent and fall back on our conceit. We defiantly, and somewhat desperately, have declarations of loyalty and synagogue security committees to keep traitors and Enemies out of our holy places, continue to sing Hatikvah, pray for the IDF and are hyper-vigilant for any sign of anti-Semitism. Underneath though, the stress born of dichotomy grows as we watch the apocalypse that is Gaza, massive demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jew attacking Jew in Ra’anana, and settlers in the West Bank strutting, scaring, slinging stones and even slaying.
Politically, the seeds of our distress can be traced back over a hundred years to the Balfour Declaration. Based on the anti-Semitic assumption that Jews had great financial clout, it was one long, carefully crafted, vague and contradictory sentence (67 words) designed to enhance British influence in the Middle East. Zionists seized upon the ambiguous phrase “national home for the Jewish people” but carefully ignored the clause “… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine …”. (Notably, nothing about political rights was included.) Soon, even President Roosevelt was declaring that “Palestine must be made a Jewish State”. Unsurprisingly, there was vocal opposition from most of the local inhabitants (over 90% Arab) and the situation quickly proved untenable. One British historian1 has declared that “measured by British interests alone, [the declaration was] one of the greatest mistakes in [its] imperial history.”
When the British threw up their hands and withdrew from Palestine, the United Nations proposed a partition of the land; the Arab League strongly objected and when the State of Israel was declared in 1948, as every Jewish child knows, the War of Independence began. But by the end of the war, Israel had triumphed; it held about 78% of Palestine and about 750,000 inhabitants had become refugees, a figure confirmed by many Israeli historians. Notwithstanding the details of how they had been exiled, they were not allowed to return. They were scapegoats sent into the wilderness for the sins of the Germans, and it is this refusal that laid the essential foundation of ethnic Jewish statehood – a Jewish majority. And that majority increased: by 1951, the population of Israel was expanded by the immigration of 700,000 Jews, some, ironically, expelled from Arab states in retaliation, thereby enhancing the ethnic imbalance.
I once asked a Palestinian attendee at the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm for how long her people would try to get their homes and land back and her bitter response was “For ever!” My response was “A bit like we Jews.” But stop for a moment of empathy. In the Talmud, Hillel says: “Don’t do to your neighbour what you wouldn’t have him do to you.” Those 750,000 people suffered the same fate as many Jews under the Romans, traumatised and wretched, filled with hate, anger and despair. But it was war and those sort of rules don’t apply, do they? Do they? For in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jews were in no mood for the niceties of Torah compassion and empathy: a Jewish state was desperately needed. So what if we didn’t let them back in? Their leaders collaborated with the Nazis, didn’t they? And so the seeds of catastrophe were planted.
If we fast forward, thanks to further wars instigated and lost by the Arabs, Israel now controls almost the whole of what was once Palestine. However, notwithstanding the further exodus of refugees (numbers vary), Jews are no longer in the majority and the presence of so many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza represents a huge obstacle to the re-creation of “the promised land”. This is a problem that many in their heart of hearts would love to see go away – but how? By fair means or foul?
Thus we come to the latest attempt to punish Israel which, I believe, is succeeding beyond Hamas’s wildest dreams. Why do I say that? Because Israel’s reaction to Hamas’s attack can be shown to violate its own historical and religious ethics and guidelines for the conduct of war. It places itself, by its own standards, firmly in the wrong and as a result, the nation is tearing itself apart and taking the Diaspora with it. To take just one example, from the Rambam2:
“When a siege is placed around a city to conquer it, it should not be surrounded on all four sides, only on three. A place should be left for the inhabitants to flee and for all those who desire, to escape with their lives.” Or how about the next verse: “We should not cut down fruit trees outside a city nor prevent an irrigation ditch from bringing water to them so that they dry up”? In other words, confinement and starvation are out as tactics of war for Jews.
There is, however, a far more basic, ancient and raw imperative, and that is lex talionis: “An eye for an eye …”. It is found in several places in Torah and also in the earlier Code of Hammurabi. (If you are ever in Paris, do see the stunning Hammurabi stele in the Louvre.) The Pharisees maintained that this law was not to be taken literally and referred to appropriate financial compensation. However, let us be gruesome and take it literally. On one side of the scales of justice we have the killing by Hamas of 1,195 people, the taking of 250 hostages, dozens of rapes and sexual assaults and immeasurable anguish, trauma and misery. What shall we place on the other side of the scale? Let us start with the report by the Associated Press that somewhere between three to four thousand Gazan children have suffered amputations, sometimes without anaesthetics. Meanwhile, the Gazan Health Ministry has released the names of 5,000 children under the age of six who have been killed. Are children The Enemy? We must also add to the balance the thousands of adults who have died and the hundreds of thousands suffering without shelter. We are commanded in the Torah “Justice, justice you shall pursue”. Even if the numbers are exaggerated, is the maiming and killing of children justice? What a wonderful way to create a new generation of terrorists thirsting for revenge!
There are those who claim that the Palestinians are part of the seven biblical nations that Joshua was commanded to wipe out. However, this claim was put to rest as long ago as 100 CE when Rabbi Yehoshua declared that the “seven nations” were no longer identifiable.
Inconveniently, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, in a book published in 19183, even believed that the Palestinian peasant population (fellahin) was descended from the ancient biblical Hebrews, and there is some genetic evidence to support this position. Nevertheless, in 2007, Mordechai Eliyahu, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Olmert that4 “an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets.”. His son, the chief rabbi of Safed, wrote: “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.” Only now, however, have a few Gazans had the great courage to protest Hamas, an organisation that in the past has attacked, abducted, tortured and murdered those who stand up to them, including members of the Palestinian Authority5. Would you or I risk torture and death to confront such rulers? I doubt I would have the courage. Would you? Thus does evil ever flourish.
Let us be clear: Gaza is controlled by a vicious fundamentalist movement that in its charter calls for the destruction of Israel. But the more the Gazans are carpet bombed and killed, the more Hamas will gain supporters – young men who have seen mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and cousins maimed and dismembered and want revenge. Quite apart from questions of morality, the annihilation is just plain dumb!
As the years of this century pass, how shall we possibly believe a new “promised land” could materialise? It would take a new Sodom and Gomorrah. The Arab states have learnt their collective lessons regarding military force and Israel is now Goliath to their slingless David. So, unless Israel feigns weakness (and notwithstanding Iran), it is highly unlikely that a new war will arise to give a pretext for expelling millions from the West Bank. Instead, harassment seems to be the method du jour as new settlements are built, land is appropriated and people are slowly forced into cities and refugee camps, or to other countries such as Canada – to Winnipeg, even. Of course Ben-Gurion’s “peasants” are going to strike back! Is harassment an honourable tactic? Is this loving one’s neighbour as oneself? Ah, but they aren’t neighbours you see, they are The Enemy, for they ambush innocent people and kill pregnant women6. Thus does evil ever flourish.
So here, in a distant country, we sit and watch, a community torn in two. Where do our loyalties lie? As you may have gathered from my quotations, I am a religious Jew who believes that our ethics must be derived from Torah and Talmud. I am a member of a synagogue, but a synagogue that refuses to admit anyone who is perceived to be The Enemy, and a member of a community that states “With Israel, For Israel. Always.” Where do my loyalties lie? Where should they lie? For me, there can no doubt – unequivocally with a Higher Authority, an Authority that demands at the pinnacle of Torah, slap dab in its middle, that I must love my neighbour as myself. That means gently arguing with the racist down the street, having kind words for the Indigenous family pushing back against subtle discrimination and trying to console the Palestinian who is mourning the death of his nephew in Gaza. But there is more.
The Talmud tells us7: “If (anyone) is in a position to protest the sinful conduct of the people of his town, and he fails to do so, he is apprehended for the sins of the people of his town. If he is in a position to protest the sinful conduct of the whole world, and he fails to do so, he is apprehended for the sins of the whole world.” Thus I protest the actions of my synagogue in keeping people out, I protest the actions of my community and I protest the actions of Israel because it is part of this world and it is sinning. It really is that simple – see wrong, protest, for God’s sake (literally), rather than keeping quiet and putting support for Israel first. Torah has an old-fashioned word for such misguided loyalties – idolatry. To quote Abraham Joshua Heschel: “God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake” that shakes us out of our complacency and challenges us first and foremost to reason – to think and analyse, not just feel, using Torah as our guide.
But there is yet more, and it is something we can do in Winnipeg. The same Talmud also states8: “Who is richest of all, …. Some say: One who can turn an enemy into his friend.” And how does one do that? Surely, there can only be one way to begin: by talking – by talking with The Enemy right here in town with empathy for their suffering. That means striving not to be ruled by fear, but taking one’s courage in both hands, being prepared to be made very uncomfortable, to confront other people’s truths. I do not have to agree, I do not have to like it, but I do have to listen. And one day, just possibly, there might be areas of agreement, even friendship, where the seeds of reconciliation are irrigated and can grow and bear fruit, for if God is prepared to reason with us (Isaiah 1, 18), surely we can reason with one another? Can’t we?
___________________________________________________________________________
David Hoult, a physicist who is one of the original developers of the MRI, is the recipient of numerous awards, including the community’s Shem Tov award for his work in helping secure kashrut in the city. He lives in Winnipeg with his wife and children.
1 Monroe, E. Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1971. Johns Hopkins University Press (1981).
22 Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 6
33 Erets yisroel in fargangenheyt un gegenvart: geografye, geshikhte, rekhtlekhe ferheltnise, bafelkerung, landvirtshaft, handl un industri (The land of Israel past and present: geography, history, legal circumstances, population, agriculture, business, and industry), with three maps of the country and eighty pictures of Israel (New York, 1918),
Hebrew translation, 1980, pp. 196–200 (in Hebrew).
44 Wagner M., Jerusalem Post, May 30th, 2007.
55 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestinians-tortured-summarily-killed-by-hamas-forces-during-2014-conflict/
66 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgq89yd7p7o
77 Shabbat 54b, 20
88 Avot d’Rabbi Natan 23
Features
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