Features
Anita Jacobson: The return of the native (sort of)
By GERRY POSNER Flexibility is an important quality as chiropractor Martin Gurvey (about whom you can read at http://www.jewishpostandnews.ca/8-features/836-martin-gurvey-a-very-flexible-guy) has demonstrated, but then in another related way, so has Anita Jacobson. You might say that Anita is to Occupational Therapy as Martin is to Chiropractry.
Anita has had, as has Martin, careers in both Manitoba and Ontario and, in both cases, has had considerable success in her chosen profession. As well, aside from her work, Anita Jacobson can make a claim that very few, if any, ex -Winnipeggers can make – more on that later.
Anita is the daughter of Bill Bulstein and Ida Cristall. Her origins are legitimately north end Winnipeg. They include going to Winnipeg Beach every summer, BB Camp and volunteer work at the Logan Neighbourhood House. It was there that she developed her social conscience and, as she says “the learning of the use of self as a therapeutic tool in treating people.”
Anita chose to enter the Faculty of Occupational Therapy in its second year of life at the University of Manitoba. Upon graduation, she entered the work force and her career, over a span of over 45 years, took off. Jacobson can rightfully say that she has risen to the top in her chosen field. And if she won’t say it, I will.
Following her obtaining a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy degree, then a Master’s Degree in Health Education from the University of Manitoba, Anita was invited to be a sessional lecturer in the Faculty of Medical Rehabilitation at the University of Manitob,a which she did for eight years. Later, Anita was a lecturer in the Department of Rehabilitation at the University of Toronto. Along the way, she received awards from the Y.W.C.A. in 1983 and 1984 as Manitoba Woman of the Year.
In the management category, Anita earned her honours with a serious devotion to her work, starting with 23 years from 1964-1987 at the Health Sciences Centre as a clinician in Mental Health and ending as the Director in the Occupational Therapy Department – covering four separate hospitals. Giving all of that up and moving to Toronto in 1987 was a major decision for Anita, who took her three children, Perry, Darryl and Lori with her at a time when they were all quite happy in Winnipeg.
Anita came to Toronto cold, seeking more challenges, really knowing no one except a sister who lived there. No matter how you slice it, this was a bold move, yet Anita carved out a career and life for herself and kids that was both enriching and satisfying.
Anita’s professional work in Toronto has been extensive and varied. She has been a consultant on several occasions to the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care at Toronto East General Hospital, St. John’s Rehab Hospital and St. Elizabeth Health Care. She was also involved with the Women’s College Hospital and at the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington.
Possibly her most important position was as the Practice Resource Liaison of the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario ( COTO), the regulatory body of the profession. Her positions as Director of Services in the areas of hospital, community and in-home services prepared her for this position. In that capacity she was responsible for writing and developing standards and regulatory policies for Ontario occupational therapists as well as providing advice to the public and OTS on regulatory practice issues.
On top of all of that, Anita has volunteered her time and energy right from her days in Winnipeg. Some readers might remember Anita as mayor of the Israel Pavilion at Folklorama in 1983 and 1984. Anita even had her daughter Lori selling bagels on a stick at the age of four at Folklorama. Anita also has had volunteer experience with the Canadian Mental Health Association, Skills Unlimited and the Mental Health Programme Services in Toronto. In each of those roles, she served on the Boards of Directors.
With all that Anita has achieved in her professional life, Anita is quite clear in her gratitude to the Health Sciences Centre, where she she found openness among various disciplines working together in innovative treatment models. She says, “As a teaching hospital, there were students from the diverse disciplines who worked with the range of staff and we learned from each other… We have to thank Drs. Harry Prosen, Bill Bebchuk, Chiefs of the Department of Psychiatry, and the psychiatrists who valued the skills and contribution of the multidisciplinary staff and who promoted teamwork.”
Now, I mentioned Anita has yet another claim to another unusual kind of fame. It’s true that she moved away with her children at a critical time in their lives. Both sons, Perry and Darryl, completed B.Sc. degrees at the University of Toronto, with Perry graduating in medicine and Darryl in law in Manitoba and both ending up earning M.B.A.’s from Western University in London, Ontario. How rare is that?
Even more unusual is that Anita’s daughter Lori made just as big a decision as her mother did in 1987 when Lori chose a few years ago, following her obtaining a B.A. at York University, to return to Winnipeg as a full time resident. It is in Winnipeg where Lori works as a manager in Human Resources. Do you suppose it was the selling of bagels at age four that drew her back? You could argue that Lori’s return to Winnipeg was a form of pay back from Anita to the city of her roots. Whatever the cause, Lori’s presence in Winnipeg is just another key reason for Anita to make trips (when it becomes feasible) to the city and to renew her many friendships there.
Features
In Dan Brown’s chaotic tale of a rampaging Golem, a case of missing Judaism
By Mira Fox September 27, 2025
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
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Strap on your best smooth-soled Italian loafers and get ready to spring over some cobblestones, because Robert Langdon — everyone’s favorite tweed-jacketed, baritone-voiced, handsome Harvard “symbologist” — is back, and he’s racing through the streets of Prague.
In Dan Brown’s newest thriller, however, there’s no Dante or Mary Magdalene; Brown is finally veering away from the Christian mythos that drove all of his previous adventures such as The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. This time, he’s taking on something older and far more mysterious: Judaism.
Each of Brown’s symbology books has a central guiding myth or story, i.e. the Holy Grail, Dante’s Inferno or the Founding Fathers’ involvement with Freemasonry. The Secret of Secrets follows the same formula, and its opening moments make its central myth obvious. Within the first few pages of the book, the Golem of Prague — which for some reason Brown insists on spelling as Golěm — has already murdered someone.
The story proceeds about as you’d expect, if you’ve read any of the previous Robert Langdon novels; though it has been eight years since we last read about the Harvard professor’s misadventures, he remains dashing and impressively fit for his age, as Brown reminds us regularly, though this time we hear less about his penchant for tweed. Langdon still has a photographic memory, which still comes in handy as he deciphers various codes, and the book is still loaded with long tangents about the history of various buildings and artifacts that Langdon is sprinting by. (Even while desperately attempting to escape from a gunman in a historic library, the symbologist has the presence of mind to consider the artist behind the frescoes on the ceiling.)
But the book is notably lacking in something surprising: the Jewish history of Prague, or of the Golem, or blood libel. There are no Hebrew translations or reinterpretations of Talmudic texts. We don’t learn some little known midrash that holds a secretive double meaning. These are the kinds of factoids that usually drive Brown’s mysteries, yet they’re absent.
The plot revolves, instead, around a damsel in distress, who readers may remember from the previous Langdon books: The beautiful “noetic scientist” Katherine Solomon, who is about to publish an academic treatise detailing her research on human consciousness and death. Apparently some very powerful people want to destroy her manuscript, so the action and mystery unfold across Prague as Langdon attempts to save Katherine, save her book, and — hey why not — save all of Prague and also maybe the United States. And, somewhere in there, a Golem is on the loose.
Brown’s previous novels have delved into various Christian mysteries with vigor and palpable fascination; whatever Brown’s many foibles as a writer, you could tell that he was excited by the myth of the Holy Grail, which took centerstage in The DaVinci Code, which he reinterpreted to be an allegory about a love affair between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In Angels and Demons, Brown has great fun with the secretive inner workings of the Vatican, and Inferno is laden with delighted diversions into Christian history and ideas about the afterlife, courtesy of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.
In The Secret of Secrets, Brown outlines the basic myth of the Golem: Rabbi Judah Loew, a 16th century Talmudic scholar and leader of Prague’s Jewish community, created a magic guardian out of clay to protect the ghetto from antisemitic attacks. Loew engraved the word “emet,” or truth, in Hebrew on its forehead to bring it to life. Eventually the Golem turned on the rabbi, almost killing him, until Loew managed to rub away the aleph in “emet,” turning the word to “met,” or death, and stopping the creature; its body was placed in an attic in case it was needed again.
That’s about all we get, yet there’s so much more to explore. In another version of the story, Loew made sure to erase the aleph from the Golem’s forehead every Shabbat to allow it to rest; instead of going on a murderous rampage, the creature was eventually destroyed because it desecrated the holy day. According to some stories, a Nazi tried to ransack the attic where the Golem was stored, and died mysteriously. Others say its body was stowed in a genizah, where sacred Jewish texts are placed since they cannot be destroyed.
Then there is the actual Jewish history, the blood libel, accusations of witchcraft and antisemitic laws that kept Jews segregated in Prague’s ghetto. There is also Loew’s own life as a lauded Talmudic scholar — not a Kabbalist, as Brown describes him — and, of course, a rich tradition of Talmudic and midrashic exegesis. The setting is rife with the kind of symbols and mystery that Brown uses as fodder in all his other thrillers, inventing secret societies and mystical artifacts lost to history.
Instead, The Secret of Secrets has no Jewish characters and very little Jewish history. Though Brown sprinkles in a few of Prague’s Jewish landmarks — the Old-New Synagogue and the city’s historic Jewish cemetery — the book still manages, despite its Golem centerpiece, to spend most of its time in churches. When Langdon first encounters the Golem and sees its forehead inscription, Brown notes that the symbologist “did not read Hebrew well,” though the professor, who specializes in religion, regularly relies on his fluency in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic and even a fake angelic language invented by two crackpot mediums that was never spoken by more than a handful of people. At one point, the Golem is described as arriving “like some kind of ascendant Christ.”
The real focus of the book is an imaginary bit of science having to do with human consciousness and life after death, a topic Brown has been exploring in the Langdon books for some time now. His interest in religion seems to stem from the idea that they are all, fundamentally, the same, and that all religions are reaching for proof that life persists after death.
But Judaism doesn’t. There are concepts — which Brown overemphasizes — like gilgul or gehenna that imply some post-death experience, but they’re not central to Jewish thought. Though one of the characters reads Loew’s most famous text, Brown clearly didn’t. (Like most works of Jewish commentary, it’s hardly the kind of work one buys in a bookstore and reads in a sitting.)
It’s not as though Brown’s previous books got everything, or even most things, right about Christianity. His wacky inventions are part of the fun — no one is reading a thriller about a fictional professor of an imaginary discipline for accuracy. The Golem is a myth, a rich story that has remained resonant over the centuries due to its flexibility and ability to be reinterpreted; Brown can make whatever he wants of it. The problem is that he has made so little.
Mira Fox is a reporter at the Forward. Get in touch at fox@forward.com or on Twitter @miraefox.
This story was originally published on the Forward.
Features
Top Free Slot Demos You Can Play Right Now
Sometimes, you might not want to pay for spinning reels. Maybe you just don’t have cash at the moment, or you want to just play for fun without any responsibilities. And that’s totally normal. Free slot demos are there for you. If you’re looking for some great options to play right now, here are the top free slot demos that are worth checking out.
Free slot demos that bring the fun
Sweet Bonanza
Fans’ favorite Sweet Bonanza demo play offers a candy-themed slot. Instead of traditional paylines, it uses a 6×5 grid where wins happen when you land eight or more matching symbols anywhere on the screen. Every win triggers the tumble feature. It means that winning symbols disappear, and new ones drop in. Potentially, they chain multiple wins together.
The highlight, though, is the free spins round. If you land four or more lollipop scatters, you’ll get 10 free spins. They’d be complete with colorful multiplier bombs that can reach up to 100x. Since the game is known for high volatility, demo mode is a nice way to test whether you enjoy the thrill of chasing those big but less frequent wins. Plus, the candy graphics and upbeat soundtrack make the whole experience surprisingly addictive.
Big Bass Bonanza
If you prefer fishing rods to candy canes, Big Bass Bonanza is another top demo slot you should try. It’s simple and fun. It has a free spins feature where the fisherman collects money values that are attached to fish symbols. As you progress through levels, multipliers increase. And it gives you a shot at some impressive wins. The demo version is a great way to see how often the fisherman shows up and whether this type of slot is what you might like.
Cleocatra
Cleocatra slots are about ancient Egypt with adorable cats. As fun as it sounds, it somehow works. The base game features wild multipliers. However, the free spins round is what makes it truly interesting. Sticky wilds lock in place and can quickly build up some wild combinations. In demo mode, you’ll get to see how powerful those sticky wilds can be without risking any cash.
Boom!
Among the slots that are packed with features, Boom! is worth a spin in demo. This game offers expanding wilds, free spins, jackpots, and even multiple bonus games. It might not be the greatest choice if you’re new to slots. There are just so many different things that it might feel overwhelming. Well, it’s free. So, even if you want to try, there’s nothing to be afraid of. That’s exactly why demo play is so useful. You can try out each feature and figure out whether you like the layered gameplay.
Sweet Bonanza 1000
Yes, Sweet Bonanza deserves two mentions. The newer Sweet Bonanza 1000 takes the original formula and cranks up the intensity. There are bigger multipliers, higher max wins, and even more fun. It makes this version perfect for people who just want extra adrenaline. Why should you try it? You can actually see if the higher risk is what you can go after. It’s more volatile than the original. That’s why trying the demo play is a wise choice.
Why play free demos?
Of course, the feeling is completely different from playing for real money. However, there are people who enjoy slots not because of the potential winnings. Here are some other reasons to pay attention to them:
- You can get the full slot experience without spending anything at all;
- You can actually figure out the bonus trigger, scatter, and volatility;
- You can see how bonus buys, multipliers, and jackpots actually play out;
- You can choose if you like slow and steady play or big swings.
Final thoughts
With the option to play free slot demos, you can try popular titles like Sweet Bonanza without any risks. Surely, they can help you just kill the time. However, they can also let you figure out the mechanics and test features. There are lots of them, and you can test them all. After that, you can decide you’re up to bet real money.
Features
New movie, “Bau, Artist at War,” now playing in Winnipeg, tells the amazing story of Joseph Bau, whose marriage to his wife Rebecca was made famous in “Schindler’s List”
“They can starve us, beat us, cage us – but they could never kill our spirit.“ – Joseph Bau
A gripping new movie, titled Bau, Artist at War, is now on at the Cineplex Odeon McGillivray Theatre.
The movie tells the story of Joseph Bau, whose dramatization of his marriage in Plaszow concentration camp to his wife Rebecca was an unforgettable scene in the movie Schindler’s List.
The film is based in large part on Bau’s memoir, Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry? (published in 1998). The film was written by Deborah Smerecnik, Ron Bass, and Sonia Kifferstein, and is directed by Sean McNamara.
Featuring stellar performances by Emile Hirsch (who appeared in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as the protagonist, and Inbar Lavi (who appeared in the Israeli television series Fauda and the U.S. television series Imposters) as Rebecca, the movie is a combination love story and espionage tale that deserves attention in an era, as one commentator has said, “where survivors are fading away, and the Holocaust is slipping from memory.” It’s also a story about resistance during the Holocaust.
In the movie, during his time in Plaszow Concentration Camp, Bau is a Jewish forger, an artist and a designer. He is employed by the brutal commandant Josef Liepold to draw a newly planned wing in the prison. He is simultaneously forging IDs for Jewish inmates helping them escape the prison. Hirsch as Bau, also draws comics for the prisoners, and his gift of art inspires his future wife with his colorful “lifegiving” creations, to which she responds in the gloomy setting of the death camp. McNamara cleverly intercuts these wonderful artworks within the film’s action.
Joseph Bau was a man who defied the darkness of the Holocaust with art, humor, and an unbreakable spirit. A gifted artist and master forger, Bau risked his life to save others, using his talent to create false documents that helped fellow prisoners escape certain death. But in the depths of despair, he discovered something even more powerful…love.
In the Plaszow concentration camp, amid relentless brutality, Joseph met Rebecca – a woman whose courage matched his own.
Years later, when Joseph is called to testify against the sadistic Nazi officer who tormented him, he is forced to relive the horrors of his past. But through it all, he draws strength from the love that saved him, the art that sustained him, and the unyielding will that kept him alive.
A gripping war drama, a daring espionage thriller, and one of the greatest love stories of our time, Bau, Artist at War is a testament to the power of resilience, the triumph of the human spirit, and the unbreakable bonds that even war could not destroy.
More stills from the movie:
