Features
Dan Petrenko brings a youthful enthusiasm to his role as the new WJT artistic director
By BERNIE BELLAN At the age of 24, Dan Petrenko became the youngest artistic director of any of the member theaters of the Canadian Professional Association of Canadian Theaters (PACT) when he was hired this past November as the new artistic director of Winnipeg Jewish Theatre.
Dan was actually in London, England, having just moved there two and a half months previously, when he was contacted by a recruiter for the WJT, who asked him whether he might like to meet with the WJT board (via Zoom) to discuss the possibility of his becoming the new WJT artistic director.
The WJT’s previous artistic director, Ari Weinberg, announced in June 2022 that, after seven seasons as WJT artistic director, he would be moving on to a new position in Ontario.
Now in its 35th season the WJT has had only five artistic directors prior to Dan Petrenko: Bev Aronovitch, Kayla Gordon, Mariam Bernstein, Michael Nathanson, and Ari Weinberg. The WJT is the only professional theatre company in Canada dedicated to developing and producing new Jewish works.
Recently, we sat down with Dan Petrenko to discuss the path he took to his present position.
Dan was born in Israel, the son of Jewish parents who had moved from their hometown of Odessa in Ukraine.
A formative influence in his life, he says, was his grandmother, who had been a pianist in Ukraine. She had aspirations early in her life to study in a music conservatory, but the antisemitism that was pervasive in the Soviet Union prevented her from achieving that ambition. Instead, she had to travel all the way to Siberia in order to obtain training to become a pianist.
In 1991, Dan’s parents made two momentous decisions, he says: They got married and they moved to Israel, settling in Givaataim.
As Dan describes it, “For the first time in their lives, my parents felt they could be Jewish.”
Life in Israel was good for the Petrenkos, but things changed for the worse in 2006 when Israel became engaged in a major conflict in Lebanon.
Dan and his sister were enrolled in a kindergarten in Givaataim when, one day after dropping Dan and his sister off, his parents heard on the radio that a bus had exploded right next to their children’s kindergarten.
“They didn’t want to leave Israel,” Dan observes, but, like other Israelis who wanted to find someplace safer in which to raise their children, his parents decided to leave, eventually moving to Toronto.
Arriving to Toronto, however, had a paradoxical effect on the Petrenko family, Dan explains.
“In Israel you didn’t have to be Jewish; everyone was.” But coming to Toronto, with its polyglot ethnic mix, awakened a desire in the Petrenkos to embrace their Jewish heritage.
“It was in Toronto that we celebrated our first Passover seder,” Dan says. “We also started going to synagogue for the first time.”
As well, the Petrenkos started keeping kosher and observing Shabbat, something Dan says he adheres to.
Still, when I asked Dan whether he went to Jewish school in Toronto, he says he didn’t.
His first real immersion in a Jewish milieu in Canada, he explains, came when he went to a Jewish summer sleep-over camp near Toronto, called J Academy.
“It was specifically for kids from Russian-speaking Jewish backgrounds,” he explains.
In time Dan went on from being a camper at J Academy to becoming a counsellor, and eventually a senior staff member.
It was also during his high school years that Dan says he began playwriting and directing. In fact, when he was still in high school, Dan wrote a play called “Train for Two,” which was based on his own family’s experience in the Holocaust. Later, he was able to mount a successful production of that play when he was only 17 and had started his own youth theatre company called JDY Theatre.
I asked Dan from where he derived his artistic sensibility?
He answers that, as a young boy, his grandmother had taken him to the opera and to ballet, so developing an interest in theatre was a natural progression.
Even through his years at the University of Toronto, where he double majored in Theatre and International Relations, Dan remained the artistic director of JDY Theatre.
By the time the Covid epidemic began in 2020, however, Dan had moved on to become artistic director of another theatre company: Olive Branch Theatre, which is described as “a non-profit professional company dedicated to providing opportunities for new-generation artists.”
In 2022 Dan returned to university to obtain his masters degree in Theatre. That same year he directed a production of “A Night on Jewish Broadway” in the newly renovated Leah Posluns Theatre in the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre.
This past fall, Dan decided to move to London to pursue opportunities in the West End theatre district.
While in London, he received that unexpected request from a recruiter for the WJT.
It turns out that Dan already had an extensive knowledge of the WJT, as he explains: “I had written a paper on the WJT while I was in university.”
His meeting with the WJT board via Zoom must have been an impressive one for, as Dan says, “I was offered the job the same day.” (He also says he has no idea how many other people might have been considered for the job as WJT artistic director.)
By the same token, the immediate positive reception Dan received from the WJT board was reciprocated. “After meeting with the board,” he says, “I felt this was an organization I wanted to be a part of…So far I feel I’ve hit the jackpot.”
We also have a story by Myron Love about WJT’s upcoming production of “Summer of Semitism,” but we wanted to ask Dan about the play. Since he was hired after the 2022-23 playbill had been announced, Dan won’t be at the helm of the play. (It will be directed by Winnipeg’s Krista Jackson, a former associate artistic director at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.)
The play was written by Ori Black, a young Torontonian. “It’s been in development for six years,” Dan explains.
“It’s a play about belonging – or not belonging,” he continues. “Is it only in a time of crisis that we think we’re part of the Jewish community?”
The play is set in an overnight summer camp (Camp Mazel), where four friends who grew up together and who are now tasked with running the camp, find they have to deal with an unexpected challenge having to do with antisemitism. (We won’t reveal the exact nature of what that challenge is.)
Tension develops among the four camp leaders stemming from the fact that one of them isn’t Jewish.
As Dan puts it: “They’re all brothers, but the question is: ‘Who belongs…who really fits in in a time of crisis?”
The show is intended to provoke a wider discussion of antisemitism and how we respond to it. Dan notes that following two of the shows – on April 30 and May 4, audience members will be invited to participate in a talk-back session.
Tickets for “The Summer of Semitism” can be obtained from the WJT, either online at https://www.wjt.ca or by calling 204-477-7478.
Features
Israel’s Arab Population Finds Itself in Dire Straits
By HENRY SREBRNIK There has been an epidemic of criminal violence and state neglect in the Arab community of Israel. At least 56 Arab citizens have died since the beginning of this year. Many blame the government for neglecting its Arab population and the police for failing to curb the violence. Arabs make up about a fifth of Israel’s population of 10 million people. But criminal killings within the community have accounted for the vast majority of Israeli homicides in recent years.
Last year, in fact, stands as the deadliest on record for Israel’s Arab community. According to a year-end report by the Center for the Advancement of Security in Arab Society (Ayalef), 252 Arab citizens were murdered in 2025, an increase of roughly 10 percent over the 230 victims recorded in 2024. The report, “Another Year of Eroding Governance and Escalating Crime and Violence in Arab Society: Trends and Data for 2025,” published in December, noted that the toll on women is particularly severe, with 23 Arab women killed, the highest number recorded to date.
Violence has expanded beyond internal criminal disputes, increasingly affecting public spaces and targeting authorities, relatives of assassination targets, and uninvolved bystanders. In mixed Arab-Jewish cities such as Acre, Jaffa, Lod, and Ramla, violence has acquired a political dimension, further eroding the fragile social fabric Israel has worked to sustain.
In the Negev, crime families operate large-scale weapons-smuggling networks, using inexpensive drones to move increasingly advanced arms, including rifles, medium machine guns, and even grenades, from across the borders in Egypt and Jordan. These weapons fuel not only local criminal feuds but also end up with terrorists in the West Bank and even Jerusalem.
Getting weapons across the border used to be dangerous and complex but is now relatively easy. Drones originally used to smuggle drugs over the borders with Egypt and Jordan have evolved into a cheap and effective tool for trafficking weapons in large quantities. The region has been turning into a major infiltration route and has intensified over the past two years, as security attention shifted toward Gaza and the West Bank.
The Negev is not merely a local challenge; it serves as a gateway for crime and terrorism across Israel, including in cities. The weapons flow into mixed Jewish-Arab cities and from there penetrate the West Bank, fueling both organized crime and terrorist activity and blurring the line between them.
The smuggling of weapons into Israel is no longer a marginal criminal phenomenon but an ongoing strategic threat that traces a clear trail: from porous borders with Egypt and Jordan, through drones and increasingly sophisticated smuggling methods, into the heart of criminal networks inside Israel, and in a growing number of cases into lethal terrorist operations. A deal that begins as a profit-driven criminal transaction often ends in a terrorist attack. Israeli police warn that a population flooded with illegal weapons will act unlawfully, the only question being against whom.
The scale of the threat is vast. According to law enforcement estimates, up to 160,000 weapons are smuggled into Israel each year, about 14,000 a month. Some sources estimate that about 100,000 illegal weapons are circulating in the Negev alone.
Israeli cities are feeling this. Acre, with a population of about 50,000, more than 15,000 of them Arab, has seen a rise in violent incidents, including gunfire directed at schools, car bombings, and nationalist attacks. In August 2025, a 16-year-old boy was shot on his way to school, triggering violent protests against the police.
Home to roughly 35,000 Arab residents and 20,000 Jewish residents, Jaffa has seen rising tensions and repeated incidents of violence between Arabs and Jews. In the most recent case, on January 1, 2026, Rabbi Netanel Abitan was attacked while walking along a street, and beaten.
In Lod, a city of roughly 75,000 residents, about half of them Arab, twelve murders were recorded in 2025, a historic high. The city has become a focal point for feuds between crime families. In June 2025, a multi-victim shooting on a central street left two young men dead and five others wounded, including a 12-year-old passerby. Yet the killing of the head of a crime family in 2024 remains unsolved to this day; witnesses present at the scene refused to testify.
The violence also spilled over to Jewish residents: Jewish bystanders were struck by gunfire, state officials were targeted, and cars were bombed near synagogues. Hundreds of Jewish families have left the city amid what the mayor has described as an “atmosphere of war.”
Phenomena that were once largely confined to the Arab sector and Arab towns are spilling into mixed cities and even into predominantly Jewish cities. When violence in mixed cities threatens to undermine overall stability, it becomes a national problem. In Lod and Jaffa, extortion of Jewish-owned businesses by Arab crime families has increased by 25 per cent, according to police data.
Ramla recorded 15 murders in 2025, underscoring the persistence of lethal violence in the city. Many victims have been caught up in cycles of revenge between clans, often beginning with disputes over “honour” and ending in gunfire. Arab residents describe the city as “cursed,” while Jewish residents speak openly about being afraid to leave their homes
Reluctance to report crimes to the authorities is a central factor exacerbating the problem. Fear of retaliation by families or criminal organizations deters victims and their relatives from coming forward, contributing to a clearance rate of less than 15 per cent of all murders. The Ayalef report notes that approximately 70 per cent of witnesses refused to cooperate with police investigations, citing doubts about the state’s ability to provide protection.
Violence in Arab society is not just an Arab sector problem; it poses a direct and serious threat to Israel’s national security. The impact is twofold: on the one hand, a rise in crime that affects the entire population; on the other, the spillover of weapons and criminal activity into terrorism, threatening both internal and regional stability. This phenomenon reached a peak in 2025, with implications that could lead to a third intifada triggered by either a nationalist or criminal incident.
The report suggests that along the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, Israel should adopt a technological and security-focused response: reinforcing border fences with sensors and cameras, conducting aerial patrols to counter drones, and expanding enforcement activity.
This should be accompanied by a reassessment of the rules of engagement along the border area, enabling effective interdiction of smuggling and legal protocols that allow for the arrest and imprisonment of offenders. The report concludes by emphasizing that rising violence in cities, compounded by weapons smuggling in the Negev, is eroding Israel’s internal stability.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
The Chapel on the CWRU Campus: A Memoir
By DAVID TOPPER In 1964, I moved to Cleveland, Ohio to attend graduate school at Case Institute of Technology. About a year later, I met a girl with whom I fell in love; she was attending Western Reserve University. At that time, they were two entirely separate schools. Nonetheless, they share a common north-south border.
Since Reserve was originally a Christian college, on that border between the two schools there is a Chapel on the Reserve (east) side, with a four-sided Tower. On the top of the Tower are three angels (north, east, & south) and a gargoyle (west); the latter therefore faces the Case side. Its mouth is a waterspout – and so, when it rains, the gargoyle spits on the Case side. The reason for this, I was told, is that the founder of Case, Leonard Case Jr., was an atheist.
In 1968, that girl, Sylvia, and I got married. In the same year the two schools united, forming what is today still Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). I assume the temporal proximity of these two events entails no causality. Nevertheless, I like the symbolism, since we also remain married (although Sylvia died almost 6 years ago).
Speaking of symbolism: it turns out that the story told to me is a myth. Actually, Mr. Case was a respected member of the Presbyterian Church. Moreover, the format of the Tower is borrowed from some churches in the United Kingdom – using the gargoyle facing west, toward the setting sun, to symbolize darkness, sin, or evil. It just so happens that Case Tech is there – a fluke. Just a fluke.
We left Cleveland in 1970, with our university degrees. Harking back to those days, only once during my six years in Cleveland, was I in that Chapel. It was the last day before we left the city – moving to Winnipeg, Canada – where I still live. However, it was not for a religious ceremony – no, not at all. Sylvia and I were in the Chapel to attend a poetry reading by the famed Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg.
My final memory of that Chapel is this. After the event, as we were walking out, I turned to Sylvia and said: “I’m quite sure that this is the first and only time in the entire long history of this solemn Chapel that those four walls heard the word ‘fuck’.” Smiling, she turned to me and said, “Amen.”
This story was first published in “Down in the Dirt Magazine,”
vol, 240, Mars and Cotton Candy Clouds.
Features
MyIQ: Supporting Lifelong Learning Through Accessible Online IQ Testing
Strong communities are built on education, curiosity, and meaningful conversation. Whether through schools, cultural institutions, or family discussions at the dinner table, intellectual growth has always played a central role in local life. Today, digital tools are expanding the ways individuals explore personal development — including the ability to assess cognitive skills online.
One such platform is MyIQ, an online service that allows users to take a structured IQ test and receive detailed results. As more people seek accessible educational resources, platforms like MyIQ are becoming part of broader conversations about learning, intelligence, and personal growth.
Why Cognitive Self-Assessment Matters in Local Communities
Education as a Community Value
Across many communities, education is viewed not simply as academic achievement, but as a lifelong commitment to learning. Parents encourage curiosity in their children. Students strive for academic excellence. Adults pursue professional growth or personal enrichment.
Cognitive assessment tools offer a structured way to reflect on skills such as:
- Logical reasoning
- Numerical understanding
- Pattern recognition
- Verbal analysis
These are foundational abilities that influence academic performance and everyday problem-solving.
Encouraging Constructive Dialogue
Online discussions about intelligence often spark meaningful reflection. When handled responsibly, IQ testing can serve as a starting point for conversations about:
- Study habits
- Educational opportunities
- Strengths and challenges
- The balance between genetics and environment
MyIQ fits into this dialogue by providing structured results and transparent explanations.
What Is MyIQ?
MyIQ is an online IQ testing platform designed to measure reasoning abilities across multiple cognitive domains. Unlike casual internet quizzes, MyIQ presents an organized testing experience followed by contextualized reporting.
A public Reddit discussion that references the platform can be viewed here: MyIQ
In this thread, users openly discuss their results and reflect on possible influences such as family background and personal development. The transparency of this conversation highlights organic engagement and reinforces the platform’s credibility.
How the MyIQ Test Is Structured
Multi-Domain Assessment
MyIQ evaluates intelligence across several structured areas:
Logical Reasoning
Assesses the ability to analyze information and draw conclusions.
Mathematical Reasoning
Measures comfort with numbers, sequences, and quantitative logic.
Pattern Recognition
Evaluates the ability to detect visual or numerical relationships.
Verbal Comprehension
Tests interpretation and understanding of written material.
This approach ensures that results are not based on a single narrow skill set but on a broader cognitive profile.
Clear and Contextualized Results
After completing the assessment, users receive:
- An overall IQ score
- Percentile ranking
- Explanation of score range
- Identification of stronger and weaker domains
For individuals unfamiliar with IQ metrics, percentile ranking offers helpful context. Instead of viewing a number in isolation, users can understand how their results compare statistically.
Such clarity supports responsible interpretation and reduces misunderstanding.
Comparing MyIQ to Informal IQ Quizzes
| Feature | MyIQ | Informal Online Quiz |
| Structured Categories | Yes | Often Random |
| Percentile Explanation | Included | Rare |
| Balanced Reporting | Yes | Minimal |
| Community Discussion | Active | Limited |
| Professional Presentation | Yes | Varies |
For readers interested in credible digital services, this structured approach stands out.
Responsible Use of IQ Testing
It is important to emphasize that IQ scores represent specific cognitive abilities measured under standardized conditions. They do not define:
- Character
- Work ethic
- Creativity
- Compassion
- Community involvement
Many successful individuals contribute meaningfully to their communities regardless of standardized test scores. MyIQ presents results as informational tools rather than labels, encouraging thoughtful reflection.
The Role of Community Feedback
Trust in digital services increasingly depends on transparent user experiences. The Reddit thread linked above demonstrates:
- Voluntary sharing of results
- Open questions about interpretation
- Constructive discussion about intelligence and background
- Honest reflection on expectations
Such dialogue aligns with community values that prioritize conversation and shared understanding.
When users openly analyze their experiences, it adds authenticity beyond promotional claims.
Who Might Benefit from MyIQ?
Students
Students preparing for academic milestones may find value in understanding their reasoning strengths.
Parents
Parents curious about cognitive development may use structured assessments as conversation starters about learning habits.
Professionals
Adults seeking self-improvement can use IQ testing as one of many personal development tools.
Lifelong Learners
Individuals who enjoy intellectual exploration may simply appreciate structured insight into how they process information.
Digital Tools and Modern Learning
Community life increasingly intersects with technology. From online education platforms to digital libraries, accessible learning resources are expanding opportunities.
MyIQ fits into this landscape by offering:
- Online accessibility
- Clear and structured format
- Immediate feedback
- Transparent reporting
This accessibility allows individuals to explore cognitive assessment privately and thoughtfully.
Intelligence: Genetics and Environment
The Reddit discussion highlights a common question: how much of intelligence is influenced by genetics versus environment?
While scientific research suggests both play roles, IQ testing should not be viewed as deterministic. Education quality, nutrition, mental stimulation, and life experiences all contribute to cognitive development.
MyIQ does not claim to define destiny. Instead, it offers a snapshot — a moment of measurement within a broader life journey.
Final Thoughts: MyIQ as a Tool for Reflection
Communities thrive when curiosity is encouraged and learning is valued. In this spirit, structured self-assessment tools can serve as part of a healthy intellectual culture.
MyIQ provides an organized, transparent, and discussion-supported approach to online IQ testing. With contextualized results and visible community dialogue, the platform demonstrates credibility and accessibility.
For readers interested in exploring their reasoning abilities — whether for academic, professional, or personal reasons — MyIQ offers a modern digital option aligned with the principles of education, reflection, and lifelong growth.
Used thoughtfully, it becomes not a label, but a conversation starter — one that supports curiosity, awareness, and continued learning within any engaged community.