Features
Dan the Carver carves unique role for himself carving mezuzah casings
By MYRON LOVE
Danny Waldman says that he has always enjoyed the challenge of doing something no one else is doing. That philosophy has led him to forge a niche creating hand-crafted mezzuzah casings out of blocks of wood.
“I started creating mezuzahs casings three years ago,” says the artist who goes by the moniker of “Dan the Carver” and who also produces wooden bowls, smudge bowls (for Indigenous ceremonies) and walking sticks. “We were moving into our new house. We needed a mezuzah, but I couldn’t find one that I liked. So I took a piece of nice wood and carved one.”
After that, Waldman began carving mezuzahs to give as gifts to family and friends. ‘Everybody like them,” he says. “So I began making more of them.
“I have developed my own style of carving. Others who have tried using my techniques have found it difficult acquiring the appropriate tools.”
Waldman has actually come rather late in life to his artistic endeavours. As he points out, he has worn a number of different job titles including contractor, insurance agent, medic and operator of a horse ranch.
Born and raised in Winnipeg, the son of the late Ben and Riva Waldman, as a young man he first tried kibbutz life in Israel. “We were in Israel for four years,” he says. “We intended to make aliyah and had applied to join a moshav in the Sinai. But we couldn’t get bank financing because the banks knew that Israel was about to return the Sinai to Egypt.”
Having returned to Canada, Waldman settled in Nova Scotia where, for 12 years, he raised horses. “We trained our horses for competitive as well as casual riding,” he recalls. “We also offered therapeutic riding for adults and children.”
As a result of significant changes to his personal life, Waldman gave up the equine business and relocated to Wisconsin. “I was looking for work,” he explains. “Someone suggested that I take en emergency responder course. I got a job the day after I graduated.”
His move to Wisconsin was by chance. “I dropped in on some Habonim friends in Wisconsin and ended up staying for two years,” he says.
In Wisconsin, he worked with crews fighting forest fires. He also spent some time working on oil rigs in Alberta and B.C.
“It was in Wisconsin where I started carving wooden bowls. Someone gave me a burl of wood. I carved a bowl out of it. I found that I enjoyed carving and got more burls.”
But what to do with them? He approached the Madison Museum of Modern Art and sold his first bowls.
“That was the beginning of my life as Dan the Carver,” he says.
Waldman notes that through all his years of wandering, he always considered Winnipeg “home”. Thus it was that he came back home about ten years ago. He soon found working space at what used to be the Odwak family’s butcher shop on Main Street near Logan.
“I originally came into this place by mistake,” he recounts. “There are a number of artists working in ceramics here. I was offered studio space in the basement. I became the carver in residence.”
Dan the Carver reports that he has had buyers from out of province as well as local customers. Some of his creations are on display at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, Bev Morton’s Wayne Arthur Gallery on Provencher and Creations on Alexander Avenue.
Some of his mezuzah casings are on sale in the gift shops at Temple Shalom and Congregation Etz Chayim.
Waldman notes that he carves his mezuzahs from a variety of different woods – wood that is often salvaged from sources such as old furniture or fallen trees. He has produced mezuzah casings carved out of oak, cherry, mahogany, teak, zebrawood and walnut.
The tools that he uses to carve the mezuzah casings are of his own design. “There is no catalogue for the tools I need,” he points out. “I have had to adapt different tools for my usage – and I am still figuring it out.”
Each mezuzah casing is unique, he notes. The standard price, he says, is double chai ($36).
“People can come in and choose a mezuzah from my stock or place an order,” he says. “It takes a day or two for me to make a new mezuzah.”
Not only does Dan the Carver have the distinction of being the only creator of mezuzah casings out of wood, but he is also, he notes, the longest serving congregant of the Chevra Mishnayes synagogue in north Winnipeg (having attended the shul with his father when it was on Robinson Avenue). He rejoined his family’s shul when he came back to Winnipeg – where his brother, Rob, and Dan himself are board members.
“I enjoy helping to make a minyan most Shabbats at the Chevra Mishnayes,” he says.
Readers who may wish to get in touch with Dan the carver can call 204 999 7197 or look him up on Facebook
Features
Will the Iranian Regime Collapse?
By HENRY SREBRNIK When U. S. President Donald Trump restored “maximum sanctions” pressure against Iran a year ago, he was clear about its goals: Deny Iran a nuclear weapon, dismantle its terror proxy network and stop its ballistic missile program.
The government in Tehran has fended off through violence and repression previous large-scale protests but now may limit or hold its fire. After all, Trump has been willing to go where no U.S. president has, including the authorization of a strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity last year and the recent capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Trump has demonstrated that his government is willing to use military measures to overthrow an enemy regime, and Tehran was, perhaps surprisingly, one of the closest allies of Maduro. The two countries were united by their approach to international sanctions and their ability to survive in American enmity.
Over the past three decades, this combination of political sympathy and anti-American rhetoric developed into a complex web of cooperation involving oil, finance, industry and security.
Since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, came to power in 1999, relations between Tehran and Caracas tightened significantly. During his first visit to Iran in 2001, Chavez declared that he had arrived “to help pave the way for peace, justice, stability, and progress in the 21st century.”
Nearly 300 economic, infrastructure, gas, and oil agreements were signed, worth billions of dollars. At one point, Venezuela even considered selling F-16 fighter jets to Tehran, while Iran supplied Venezuela with advanced Mohajer-6 drones. All this now comes to an end.
Maduro’s removal constitutes a severe blow to the operational base of Tehran in South America. With Maduro gone, “Iran is now in the eye of the storm,” observed Fawaz Gerges, Middle East analyst and professor of international relations at London’s School of Economics and Political Science.
“The big lesson out of the fall of the Venezuelan regime is not Colombia, not Greenland,” he said. “The Iranians know that Iran is the next target. Not only of the Trump administration, but also of the Benjamin Netanyahu government” in Israel.
Israel, which has long perceived Iran as an existential threat, launched 12 days of what it described as pre-emptive strikes on military and nuclear sites in Iran last June, with U.S. war planes attacking three major nuclear facilities.
They now see Iran as being cornered, extremely vulnerable and weak at this moment. “I think they’re piling on the pressure. They’re hoping that they could really, basically bring about regime change in Iran,” Gerges added.
On Jan. 12, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian shifted focus away from Iran’s stuttering economy and suppression of dissent and towards his country’s longstanding geopolitical adversaries, Israel and the United States. Speaking on state broadcaster IRIB, Pezeshkian claimed that “the same people that struck this country” during Israel’s 12-day war last June were now “trying to escalate these unrests with regard to the economic discussion.
“They have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have brought in some terrorists from outside,” he charged, alleging that those responsible had attacked a bazaar in the northern city of Rasht and set mosques on fire.
“My assumption is that the Mossad is active in Tehran behind the scenes,” contended Ahron Bregman, who teaches at King’s College London and has written extensively on Israeli intelligence operations. “Israeli officials are unusually quiet.” There are clear instructions not to talk and “not to be seen to be involved in any way.”
“I’d be very surprised if Israeli agents were not active within Iran right now,” defence analyst Hamze Attar maintained. “They’re going to be doing everything they can to make sure these protests continue and escalate.”
But anything that Israel is up to will of course be covert. This restraint is a calculated approach taken to avoid disrupting a process of regime change that may be driven internally. Intervening would only confirm the regime’s claims that the protesters are “Zionist agents,” a charge that could shift popular anger onto the demonstrators and douse the movement.
“Any visible involvement would give the Iranians an excuse to intensify repression,” explained Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and former head of Iran research in an Israeli military intelligence branch
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, who maintains he wants peace with Israel and the United States, suggests Iran faces a historic moment. “In all these years, I’ve never seen an opportunity as we see today in Iran. Iranian people are more than ever committed to bringing an end to this regime,” he stated. “By God, it is about time that Iran gets its opportunity to free itself from a tyrannical regime.”
Iranians have seen the regime and its backers exposed and humiliated by an American administration and Israel, and they are taking advantage of it. But it won’t be easy. This is a religious nomenklatura that will use all means at its disposal to hold on to power. Never underestimate their cruelty and resolve
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
New autobiography by Holocaust survivor Hedy Bohm – who went on to testify in trials of two Nazi war criminals
Book Review by Julie Kirsh, Former Sun Media News Research Director
My parents were Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors who arrived in Toronto in 1951 without family or friends. In the late 50s my mother met Hedy Bohm outside of our downtown apartment and quickly connected with her. Both women had suffered the loss of all family in the Shoah. Over the years our families’ custom became sharing our dining table with the Bohm family for the Jewish high holidays. The tradition continues today with the second generation.
Hedy was born in 1928 in the city of Oradea in Romania. She was a pampered only child, adored by her father and very much attached to her mother. Although Hedy was an adolescent, she was kept from hearing about the rising anti-semitism around her in her hometown. She was protected and sheltered like any child. Memoirs from other adolescents like Elie Wiesel, aged 15 in Auschwitz, Samuel Pisar, liberated at 16, and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who was found in Buchenwald by American soldiers at age 8, made me wonder about the resilience and strength of children who survived like Hedy.
Hedy was only 16 years old when she walked through the gates of hell, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hedy’s poignant retelling of this pivotal moment in her young life was the sudden separation from her father and moments later from her mother. Somehow Hedy’s mother got ahead of her upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Hedy called out to her. Her mother turned and they looked at each other. A Nazi guard prevented Hedy from joining her mother. Hedy has always been tormented by this moment of separation. Did her mother know that she was walking to her death?
Hedy writes that she was focused on survival in the camps. She concentrated on eating whatever food was given and keeping clean by washing daily in icy, cold water before the roll call. When she contracted diarrhea, she remembered her mother’s homemade remedy of gnawing on charred wood. Her naivete and innocence were overcome with a strong inner determination to stay alive so that she could see her mother again.
Hedy recounts the terrible hunger that everyone endured. One day, spotting some carrots in a warehouse, Hedy was appointed by her aunt to run and grab what she could. Luckily she evaded the armed guard who would have shot her on the spot.
On April 14, 1945, Hedy’s day of liberation, she learned the terrible fate of her mother. The return home for the survivors was a further tragedy when they realized the loss of family and community.
In her memoir, Hedy describes meeting Imre, an older boy from her town whom she eventually married. Their flight from Romania to Budapest to Pier 21 in Halifax to Toronto is documented in harrowing detail.
Hedy recounts how in Toronto no one wanted to know the stories of the survivors. This was a world before Eichmann’s trial in Israel in 1961 and the TV series, The Holocaust, in 1978. The floodgates for information from the survivors opened late in their lives.
In Toronto, after many failed enterprises, Imre and Hedy stumbled onto the shoe selling business. In 1959, they leased a small shoe store close to Honest Ed’s in downtown Toronto. Surprisingly, the business according to Hedy, became very profitable. Many years later, after Imre’s sudden death due to a heart attack, Hedy continued to manage their shoe business while taking care of her daughter, Vicky and son, Ronnie.
In 1996, Hedy was introduced to Rabbi Jordan Pearlson. Their love match made Hedy feel that she had been given a wonderful gift, late in life, which she welcomed.
Jordan died in 2008. Hedy endured and carried on with yoga and tai chi both as a teacher and devoted practitioner.
A new purpose in life opened up for Hedy when she was invited to be a speaker for the Holocaust Education Centre (now the Toronto Holocaust Museum). She spoke to mostly non-Jewish students whom she visited at their schools outside of Toronto.
Visiting Auschwitz with the March of the Living for the first time in 2010, Hedy faced her fears about returning to the place that held the horrors. She was fortunate to meet Jordana Lebowitz, a student from Toronto who developed a multimedia presentation called ShadowLight. Hedy’s contribution to teaching others about the Holocaust by sharing her experience, is immeasurable.
In 2014, Hedy was asked to be a witness at the trial of Oskar Groning , “the accountant of Auschwitz”, in Germany. In 2016, she appeared as a witness for the trial of the Nazi guard, Reinhold Hanning. He was sentenced to a mere five years in prison and Groning died before he could start his jail sentence. In having the courage to participate in these war criminal trials, Hedy spoke for her parents and all the innocents who could not speak for themselves.
Hedy’s talks to students always include an admonishment to be kind, to trust in themselves and work for the greater good. She rose above her own fears of sharing her story by speaking publicly.
Hedy’s story of survival and perseverance will remain a beacon to future generations, ensuring that hope and good will endure even in the worst of times.
Reflection
by Hedy Bohm
Published in 2026 by The Azrieli Foundation
To order a copy of the book go to https://memoirs.azrielifoundation.org/titles/reflection/
Features
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