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
The Israeli dentist who got to know people like Yahya Simwar and thousands of other Palestinian prisoners better than anyone
By BERNIE BELLAN I wanted to depart from the usual post-event analysis of what happened on Saturday, April 13 in which so many pundits have been engaging. After all, by the time this is read, Israel may have struck back against Iran, so to engage in speculation as to how Israel should respond to what Iran did that day will probably be largely outdated.
Instead, I want to write about an article that appeared on the Haaretz website on Sunday, April 14. Now, if you’re not familiar with Haaretz, I’ve been referring to that news source many times over the past couple of years – not because of its political orientation – which is decidedly leftist, but because it often contains the kind of analysis you’re just not going to see anywhere else.
The particular article that snagged my attention had this headline: ‘I Asked Sinwar, Is It Worth 10,000 Innocent Gazans Dying? He Said, Even 100,000 Is Worth It’
The person who gave that quote is someone by the name of Yuval Bitton. I doubt you’ve heard his name before. Bitton was head of something called the “Intelligence Division of the Israel Prison Service.”
The article consists of an interview Bitton recently gave, in which he recounts his career working within the Israeli prison service, where he had the opportunity to interact with some of the most dangerous terrorists Israel had taken prisoner over the past 30 years.
What was Bitton’s backround? you might wonder. He was a dentist!
But it turns out that, as a dentist, he was able to enlist the trust of even the most embittered enemies of Israel – not to confide anything that would be considered any sort of information relevant to security, but to talk more openly about their feelings. The reason, as Bitton explains in the interview, is that when he was examining someone’s teeth, his patients would let their guards down – not out of fear of Israeli intelligence, but our of fear what their fellow Palestinian prisoners might hear what they said.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview in which Bitton offers a fascinating insight as to how he was immediately able to tell whether a prisoner was Fatah or Hamas. The interviewer explains that “While preparing for this interview, I found an item from 2005 in which you (Bitton) explained the differences between the teeth of prisoners who are affiliated with Fatah and those who are members of Hamas.”
Bitton: “The teeth of Fatah inmates are in poor condition, whereas Hamas prisoners maintain hygiene and purity. Theirs is a religious way of life. Ascetic. With rigid discipline. They pray five times a day, don’t touch sweets, don’t smoke. There’s no such thing as smoking in Hamas. You see a 50-year-old prisoner who is entirely free of any signs of illness. No tooth decay. I’d say, ‘You’re Hamas? They would say, ‘Yes, how did you know?’ ‘By the teeth,’ I replied. A very basic insight.
“Everything has meaning – it’s the same with regard to their way of life, for example. At 9 P.M., there is a total lights-out in the prison’s Hamas wings; in the Fatah wings they watch television all night.”
Interviewer: “At that time you were an inquisitive dentist, with good diagnostic skills. How did you end up as an intelligence officer?”
Bitton: “There was an intelligence officer I knew who hung out a lot in the clinic, which is a supposedly safe place for prisoners. They feel free to talk there, because their organizations aren’t monitoring or eavesdropping on them. He saw that I was talking to them all the time, and I also talked with him about all kinds of insight that I had about them. He realized that I could be a platform for recruiting sources and suggested that I join the prisons service intelligence division.”
In time, Bitton moved up the ranks to the point where he actually became head of Israel Prison Intelligence. It was in that capacity, he explains, that he realized what a terrible mistake it would be to release (Hamas leader in Gaza) Yahyha Sinwar in what became the swap of 1,026 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit.
Bitton offers some fascinating insights into the differences between the mindsets of Fatah and Hamas. At one point he notes, referring to differences between Fatah and Hamas: “Fatah talked about the 1967 borders, about the occupation, about the Palestinian people. To me, the Hamas inmates would say, ‘There’s neither 1967 nor 1948. There are no borders and there is nothing to talk about. You are on Waqf land, Muslim sacred ground, and you have no place here.’ “
He goes on to describe the realization by members of Fatah that Hamas members would have no hesitation in killing them the same as they would kill any Israeli. That happened in 2007 when Hamas – which had been cooperating with Fatah in governing Gaza to that point, suddenly turned on Fatah members.
Bitton says: “We [Israelis] were taken by surprise by the horrific disaster of October 7. I’m certain that in Fatah they weren’t surprised. They’d already seen it happening – they’d already seen how people were thrown off the roof, without a drop of mercy. How they [Hamas] tied Fatah activists, still alive, to cars and dragged them through the streets until they died. From Hamas’ point of view, members of Fatah are not their brothers. So what if they are Muslims too? They are an obstacle on the road to achieving the goal: a sharia state.”
He continues. Members of Fatah warned him: “Hamas will do to you what they did to us. You’re cultivating Hamas, injecting money into Gaza, humiliating Fatah, but in the end they will do to you what they did to us.”
And, in one particularly blood-curdling story, Bitton describes Sinwar’s absolute barbarism:
“There was a high-ranking Hamasnik in prison whom Sinwar suspected of collaboration. When he got out, they hanged that person in the city square and brought his 9-year-old son to watch. Is there anything crueler than that?”
I tell these stories here not to remind that Israelis live in a “very tough neighbourhood,” which is the phrase we’ve so often heard used to describe how very dangerous it is for a non-Muslim country to exist surrounded by Muslim countries – which we all learned many years ago, but to point out the importance of getting inside the minds of your enemies.
Has Israel miscalculated time and time again when it comes to misperceiving the intent of its enemies? Yes. We now know how badly Israeli intelligence misinterpreted clear signals that Egypt was going to launch an attack across the Suez Canal in 1973, and it didn’t take long to understand that, once again, Israeli intelligence and especially Netanyahu totally missed clear signals of what Hamas was planning on October 7.
And now, we’re hearing that, once again, Israeli strategists never thought Iran would react the way it did when Israel decided to bomb Iran’s consulate in Damascus.
I’ll end this particular article by referring to the incredible contribution that the U.S. – aided by other countries, including Britain, France, and especially Jordan, made in coming to Israel’s aid on April 13.
Reports are still filtering in about the weaponry that was used to prevent anything but the smallest number of Iranian missiles from reaching their targets in Israel. The Americans deployed new counter missile systems that had never been used in real-time situations previously – enabling them to launch counter weapons high into space to intercept Iranian missiles.
Without the aid of those other countries Israel would have suffered much worse on April 13. Yet, what I am afraid we will see is an even further insistence on the part of Netanyahu and the right wing fanatics who support him to thumb their noses at their American allies and entrench themselves even further in the ongoing series of mistakes they’ve made since October 7.
And our major Jewish organizations, including CIJA, B’nai Brith, and our Jewish Federation will say nary a word in criticism. As Yuval Bitton explains so well in that Haaretz interview, if it’s anything Ithe Israeli government and the Israeli security apparatus is very good at, it’s totally misinterpreting opportunities how to properly engage with your enemies.
Features
Brothers Arnie & Michael Usiskin’s Warkov-Safeer a throwback to days of long ago
By MYRON LOVE Step into Warkov-Safeer on Hargrave in the Exchange District and you’ll feel like you’ve walked back in time to an earlier era. The shelves are crammed full of shoe-related accessories – soles, heels, laces, polish, threads, needles, dyes – and other leather-related needs.
“There used to be a shoemaker on every corner,” says Michael Usiskin, whose family has operated the wholesaler for more than 50 years. “People used to keep their shoes for years. They might resole them ten times. Now you might have five pairs in your closet – different shoes for different occasions, and buy a new pair every year or two.”
Usiskin adds that “there is no place else like us between Toronto and Vancouver. When we moved here in the 1970s, this area was buzzing with garment workers and sewing machines. This was a hub of activity. It’s a lot quieter now.”
While the Usiskin Family has been connected with the company for 85 years, Michael Usiskin points out that the company – originally catering to the horse trade – was actually founded in 1930 in Winkler by the eponymous Warkov brothers – Jacob, Mendel and Morris – and their brother-in-law, Barney Safeer. Larry Usiskin, father of Michael and his brother and partner, Arnie, went to work for the company in 1939, four years after the partners moved the business to Winnipeg (to a location at Selkirk and Main).
The late Larry Usiskin and his late wife, Roz, were leaders in Winnipeg’s secular Yiddishist community. The Usiskin brothers received their elementary schooling at the secular Sholem Aleichem School at the corner of Pritchard and Salter in the old North End.
“Our dad was maybe 16 or 17 when he went to work for Warkov-Safeer in 1939,” Michael Usiskin notes. “He would do deliveries on his bike to shoe repair shops.”
He never left.
Michael Usiskin relates that, during the war years, the company relocated to larger premises at King and Bannatyne to accommodate a growing demand for its expanding product lines.
Larry Usiskin bought the business in 1969 – with a partner – in 1969. It was not a given that either Michael or Arnie would join the family endeavour. Michael was the first of the brothers to come on board. That was in 1984.
Michael had been working for Videon Public Access TV for the previous seven years. “I was a producer, editor and camera man,” he recalls.
Among the programs he worked on were Noach Witman’s Jewish television hour and such classics as “Math with Marty” and Natalie and Ronne Pollock’s show.
“Dad began talking about retirement,” Michael recounts. “With budget cuts and lay-offs coming to Videon, it was a good time for me to get out and join Dad in business.”
Michael became Warkov-Safeer’s managing partner in 1995 on the senior Usiskin’s retirement. Arnie joined his brother in partnership in 1998.
“I had been working for CBC for 17 years as a technician,” Arnie relates. “A confluence of events presented me with the opportunity to go into the family business.”
Although Arnie bought out Michael’s previous partner, he continued on at CBC for another four years before accepting a buyout.
“I went from show business into shoe business,” he jokes.
Today, Warkov-Safeer has customers from Ontario to the West Coast. “Things have changed considerably over the years for our business,” Michael notes. “Our shoe market is now solely more expensive brands. And we also supply a lot of leather and leather-related products for hobbyists.”
He reports that a lot of their marketing has long been done by word of mouth. “We used to go to a fair number of trade shows, but not so much anymore,” he adds. “We now have a number of sales representatives throughout Western Canada and Ontario.”
“We’re not high tech,” Arnie points out. “We have a niche market. What we sell is a form of recycling – allowing people to look after and fix their shoes. We see a trend developing in this area.”
While Arnie and Michael Usiskin have no plans to retire quite yet, they do acknowledge though they are not getting any younger and would welcome someone younger to come into the business who might be willing one day to lead Warkov-Safeer into the future.
Features
Winnipeg-based singer/songwriter Orit Shimoni spreading her wings again after being grounded by Covid lockdown
By MYRON LOVE In the spring of 2020, Canadian-Israeli singer/songwriter Orit Shimoni was in the midst of a cross Canada tour. She had started in Vancouver, had a show in Edmonton and stepped off the train in Winnipeg just as the Covid lockdowns were underway. Shimoni was essentially stuck In our city, knowing virtually on one.
Four years later, she is still here, having found a supportive community and, while she has resumed touring, she has decided for now to make Winnipeg her home base.
“I really appreciate the artistic scene here,” she says. “I plan on being away on tour a lot, but I have understanding and rent is affordable.”
Our community also benefits from having such a multi-talented individual such as Shimoni living among us. Over the past 15 years, the former teacher – with a Masters degree in Theology, has toured worldwide as well as producing 12 albums of original works to date – the most recent being “Winnipeg”, a series of commentaries on her life experiences, wishes and dreams over the past couple of years – which was released last fall.
She has also produced an album of songs for Chanukah.
According to her website, Shimoni expounds on her “truths, her feelings and tells her stories” in venues that include bars, clubs and cafes, coffee houses and folkfests, theatres, back yards, living rooms, and trains. Her music is described as a potpourri of “bold and raw, soft and tender, witty and humourous,” incorporating empathy and condemnation, spirituality and whimsy,” and crosses different genres such as blues, folk and country and “speaks to the human condition, the human heart and the times that we find ourselves in”.
She observes that the inspiration for her songs can come from anywhere, including conversations with others, nature, history, news and her own lived experiences.
In response to the ongoing situation in Israel today, she reports that she is trying to use her music to create positive energy in trying to foster a commonality between people.
In addition to adding to her musical corpus while in Winnipeg these past four years, Shimoni notes that she has used her enforced lockdown downtime to explore other ventures. One of those new areas that she has been focusing on is art.
“I have always had an interest in painting,” she says. While she hasn’t had an exhibition of her painting yet, she has prints for sale and is available for commissions.
“My last two albums have my paintings as the cover art,” she points out.
Another area that the singer/songwriter has been developing over the past four years is writing and performing personalized songs for special occasions. “I can bring to birthdays, weddings and memorials personalized songs to mark the occasion,” she notes. “It is another way that I have diversified what I can offer.”
One project she completed last year – with support from the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba – was “singing the songs of our elders” in which she interviewed several Jewish seniors – with the help of Gray Academy students – and told their stories in song.
Among other performances she has given locally over the past year was a special appearance before a group of Holocaust survivors at the Gwen Secter Creative Living Centre, a self-written, one woman show – called “The Wandering Jew” at Tarbut in November and, most recently, a concert last month at Gordie’s Coffee House on Sterling Lyon Parkway.
Another new area of exploration for Shimoni is animation. In an interview with Roots Music Canada last fall, she embarked on an ambitious animation project based on her song “One Voice,” which she wrote a few years ago, and which perfectly reflects the anxiety that many people are feeling in these troubled times.
Last October, she was back on tour – with renowned American songwriter Dan Bern – after three years away from the road. She did two weeks’ worth of concerts in American West Coast states and Colorado – and. in late January, she began a month-long journey that started with shows in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal and stops throughout the Midwest as far as Texas.
She recently returned to Montreal for a show and is currently doing a series of concerts in Germany – with further stops in Belgium, Holland and England.
“It will be good to be back in Europe,” she says. “I have developed a loyal following in Germany and elsewhere.”
A writer for one publication in Berlin described Shimoni as ‘one of the most interesting singer/songwriters I have met in a long time.”
Here at home, Winnipeg concert promoter Ian Mattey observes that “with each concert, her audience has grown – a testament to the wonderful balance of her lyrical genius, haunting voice and musical talent.”
The singer/songwriter feels grounded – in a good way – in our fair city – and we hope that she will be with us for some time to come.
