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Filmmaker Shira Newman brings wealth of experiences to role of Rady JCC Coordinator of Arts & Older Adult Programming

By MYRON LOVE As with many people I have interviewed over the years, Shira Newman’s life journey towards her present stage as Rady JCC Coordinator of Arts & Older Adult Programming has encompassed a range of different areas, including: fine arts, filmmaking and teaching stints, working at the Society of Manitobans with Disabilities, and the Women’s Health Clinic and, most recently before coming to the Rady JCC, the Prairie Fusion Arts and Entertainment Centre (as program co-ordinator) in Portage La Prairie.
The daughter of Joan and the late Paul Newman began her life in River Heights.  After graduation from Grant Park, she enrolled in Fine Arts at the University of Manitoba.  In addition to painting and drawing, she took a course in film – and found that she really enjoyed it.
“I learned a lot about the art that goes into filmmaking,” she recalls.  “We watched foreign films and independent films. I fell in love with the ideas of creating this three-dimensiomal world on the screen.”
After earning her first degree at the University of Manitoba, Newman worked for a few years at the aforementioned Women’s Health Clinic and the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities before returning – in her mid-20s – to university, this time Concordia in Montreal – to study filmmaking full time. 
After completing the two year program Newman returned to Winnipeg and became involved with the Winnipeg Film Group and the Winnipeg film community.
Over the next few years, she taught filmmaking in Winnipeg School Division No. 1, and also began to get work  in our city’s booming film production industry, working in set design and costuming..
Her big break came when she was asked by local filmmaker Sean Garrity to serve as script supervisor on one of his movies.
(According to Wikipedia,  a script supervisor oversees the continuity of the motion picture, including dialogue and action during a scene. The script supervisor may also be called upon to ensure wardrobe, props, set dressing, hair, and makeup are consistent from scene to scene. The script supervisor keeps detailed notes on each take of the scene being filmed. The notes recorded by the script supervisor during the shooting of a scene are used to help the editor cut the scenes together in the order specified in the shooting script. They are also responsible for keeping track of the film production unit’s daily progress.)
“I knew Sean’s films and was excited that he asked to me to work with him,” Newman recalls.
That job led to many other assignments as a script supervisor over the next ten years. “I worked on a lot of Hallmark Movies being shot here as well as some Lifetime features,” she says.
The last movie shot in Winnipeg that Newman worked on was in 2018. It was called “Escaping the Madhouse: the Nellie Bly Story”.
It was about that time that Newman felt that she needed a change in direction.  “Making a movie is a world in itself,” she observes, “but the work isn’t steady.  I decided that I needed something more stable.”
Thus, she responded to an ad for a coordinator at the Prairie Fusion Centre in Portage. The Centre, she notes, has a gallery, a store and classes. She was responsible for educational programming.
Newman stayed at the Prairie Fusion Centre for a year – commuting every day from Winnipeg.  Then she saw the Rady JCC ad calling for a Coordinator for Arts and Older Adult Programming.
“It was a perfect fit for me,” she says.
Newman is now in her fourth year at the Rady JCC.  One of the first programs she introduced was a new social club for seniors – replacing the former Stay Young Club which had been disbanded some years before due to flagging attendance.
Club programs are Mondays at 11:00. “We have guest speakers and musical programs and we celebrate all the holidays,” Newman notes.
Last year, Newman introduced a new Yiddish Festival – picking up where the former Mamaloshen left off.  “While studying filmmaking, I developed an appreciation  for the 1930s Yiddish cinema,” she reports.  “In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in Yiddish culture, music and literature.”
For the first “Put a Yid in it Festival of new Yiddish Culture,” Newman brought in younger performers in the persons of ”Beyond the Pale”, a Toronto-based klezmer band that also performs Romanian and Balkan music – and, from Montreal, Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled – a rap artist and record producer who combines hip hop, klezmer and folk music.
“We had the concert at the West End Cultural Centre.” Newman reports. “We had a great crowd with people of all ages, including kids.”
For this second upcoming Yidfdish festival at the beginning of February, Newman is organizing three concerts featuring klezmer group “Schmaltz and Pepper” from Toronto;  “Forshpil”, a Yiddish and klezmer band from Latvia; and live music to accompany a 1991 movie called “The Man Without a World” – a recreation of a 1920s silent movie set in a  Polish shtetl.
This year’s festival will also include three movies and two speakers.  Among the movies is “The Jester”.  Co-directed by Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylski – who also made “Yiddle with His Fiddle” in 1936, “The Jester” is a musical drama involving a love triangle featuring a wandering jester, a charismatic vaudeville performer, and Esther, the shoemaker’s daughter, torn between her family’s desire for a prominent match and her own dreams.
“Yiddishland”,  by Australian Director Ros Horin,  focuses on the art and practices of a diverse group of innovative international artists who create new works about the important issues of our time in the Yiddish language, why they create in Yiddish, what it means to them personally and professionally, and what obstacles they must overcome to revive what was once considered a dying language..
“Mamele” is described as “a timeless masterpiece, brought to life by Molly Picon, the legendary Pixie Queen of the Yiddish Musical.  Picon shines as a devoted daughter who keeps her family together after the loss of their mother. Caught between endless responsibilities and her own dreams, her world changes when she discovers a charming violinist across the courtyard. Set in the vibrant backdrop of Lodz, this enchanting musical comedy-drama immerses audiences in the rich diversity of interwar Jewish life in Poland – featuring everything from pious communities to nightclubs, gangsters and spirited ‘nogoodnicks’’.”
The speaking presentation will nclude a talk by the University of Manitoba Yiddish teacher Professor Itay Zutra “exploring the resilience and survival of Yiddish art, from S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk to the demons of I.B. Singer, through the trauma of the Holocaust and beyond.”
There will also be a panel discussion highlighting the pivotal experience of the Jewish community in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, with a focus on Yiddish-speaking organizations and newspapers.
Back in late October, Newman organized our community’s first JFest – a celebration of Jewish Culture and the Arts – which highlighted the works of seven local Jewish artists.  She reports that the art exhibit was well attended.
She also mentions ongoing Rady JCC programs such as the long-running “Music and Mavens” and the annual Jewish Film Festival.
Returning to the subject of filmmaking, Newman has been a film programmer for the Gimli International Film Festival for the last four years. (The first years, she says, she served as the shorts programmer and the last three as the documentary film programmer.)
She adds that her first short film, “The Blessing,” which she made when she returned to Winnipeg from Montreal, was shown at various festivals, including the Toronto International Jewish Film Festival.It was also shown here in Winnipeg at the Winnipeg Jewish International Film Festival where it won the award here for “best short film by an  emerging or established local filmmaker.”
In her spare time, Newman reports, she has embarked on a new project.   “I am working on a documentary about Monarch butterflies and the community of people who are dedicated to preserving them. These are regular people who have become citizen scientists.  I am working with a  friend whose zaida was a biology teacher and instilled in his family a love of nature and conservation.  I have met people who have gone to Mexico to see for themselves where the butterflies spend their winters.”
Newman is anticipating that the new documentary will be completed within a year.

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Winkler nurse stands with Israel and the Jewish people

Nellie Gerzen

By MYRON LOVE Considering the great increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Canada over the past 20 months – and the passivity of government, federally, provincially and municipally, in the face of this what-should-be unacceptable criminal behaviour, many in our Jewish community may feel that we have been abandoned by our fellow citizens.
Polls regularly show that as many as 70% of Canadians support Israel – and there are many who have taken action.  One such individual is Nelli Gerzen, a nurse at the Boundary Trails Health Centre (which serves the communities of Winkler and Morden in western Manitoba).  Three times in the past 20 months, Gerzen has taken time off work to travel to Israel to support Israelis in their time of need.
I asked her what those around her thought of her trips to Israel. “My mother was worried when I went the first time (November 2023),” Gerzen responded, “but, like me, she has trust in the Lord.  My friends and colleagues have gotten used to it.”
She also reports that she is part of a small group of fellow believers that meet online regularly and pray for Israel.
Gerzen is originally from Russia, but grew up in Germany. Her earliest exposure to the history of the Holocaust, she relates, was in Grade 9 – in Germany.  “My history teacher in Germany in Grade 9 went into depth with the history of World War II and the Holocaust,” she recalls. “It is normal that all the teachers taught about the Holocaust but she put a lot of effort into teaching specifically this topic. We also got to watch a live interview with a Holocaust survivor.”
What she learned made a strong impression on her.  “I have often asked myself what I would do if I were living in that era,” she says.  “Would I have been willing to hide Jews in my home? Or risk my life to save others?”
Gerzen came to Canada in 2010 – at the age of 20.  She received her nursing training here and has been working at Boundary Trails for the last three years.
“I believe in the G-d of Israel and that the Jews are his Chosen People,” she states.  “We are living at a time of skyrocketing anti-Semitism. Many Jews are feeling vulnerable.  I felt that I had to do something to help.”
Gerzen’s first trip to Israel was actually in 2014 when she signed onto a youth tour organized by a Christian group, Midnight Call, based in Switzerland.  That initial visit left a strong impact.  “That first visit changed my life,” she remembers.  “I enjoyed having conversations with the Israelis.  The bible for me came to life.  Every stone seemed to have a story.”
She went on a second Midnight Call Missionaries tour of Israel in 2018.  She went back again on her own in the spring of 2023.  After October 7, she says, “I couldn’t sit at home. I had to do something.”
Thus, in November 2023, she went back to Israel, this time as a volunteer.  She spent two weeks at Petach Tikvah cooking meals for Israelis displaced from the north and the south as well as IDF soldiers. She also spent a day with an Israeli friend delivering food to IDF soldiers stationed near Gaza. She notes that she wasn’t worried so close to the border. 
“I trusted in the Lord,” she says.   “It was a special feeling being able to help.”
Last November, she found herself at Kiryat Shmona (with whom our Jewish community has close ties), working for two weeks alongside volunteers from all over the world cooking for the IDF.
On one of her earlier visits, she recounts, a missile struck just a few metres from the kitchen where the volunteers were working.  There was some damage – forcing closure for a few days while repairs were ongoing, but no injuries.
In January, she was back at Kiryat Shmona for another two weeks cooking for the IDF.  She also helped deliver food to Metula on the northern border. This last time, she reports, there was a more upbeat atmosphere, “even though,” she notes, “the wounds are still fresh.  It was quieter. There were no more missiles coming in.
“Israelis were really touched by the presence of so many of us volunteers.  I only wish more Christians would stand up for Israel.
“It was really moving to hear people’s stories first-hand.”
She recounts the story of one Israeli she met at a Jerusalem market who fought in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, who was the only survivor of the tank he was in.
“This guy lost so much in his life, and he was standing there telling the story and smiling, just trying to live life again,” she says. “The people there are so heartbroken.”
Back home, she has been showing her support for Israel and the Jewish people by attending the weekly rallies on Kenaston in support of the hostages whenever she can.
She is looking forward to playing piano at Shalom Square during Folklorama.
Nelli Gerzen doesn’t know yet when she will be returning to Israel – but it is certain to be soon.  “This is my chance to step up for the truth,” she concludes. “I know that supporting Israel is the right thing to do. When I am there, it feels like my heart is on fire.”  

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Antisemitism in the Medical Profession in Canada

Dr. Gem Newman, who gave the valedictory address at the 2024 graduation of medical students from the Ernest Rady College of Medicine

By HENRY SREBRNIK (June 27, 2025) Antisemitism in Canada now flourishes even where few would expect to confront it. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, there has been a resurgence of antisemitism noticeable in the world of healthcare. 

When Israeli Gill Kazevman applied to medical school, and circulated his CV to physician mentors, their most consistent feedback was, “Do not mention anything relating to Israel,” he told National Post journalist Sharon Kirkey in an Aug. 10, 2024, story. As a student at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, “I began to see all kinds of caricatures against Jews. I saw faculty members, people in power, people that I’m supposed to rely on, post horrible things against Jews, against Israelis,” he added. The faculty created a Senior Advisor on Antisemitism, Dr. Ayelet Kuper, who in a report released in 2022, confirmed widespread anti-Jewish hatred.

The Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) conducted a 2024 survey of 944 Jewish doctors and medical students from across Canada. Two thirds of respondents were “concerned that antisemitic bias from peers or educators will negatively affect their careers.” Dr. Lisa Salomon, JMAO’s president, reported that at the University of Toronto medical school only 11 Jewish students were completing their first year of medical school out of a class of 291. The medical school in 1974 saw 46 Jews in a class of 218.

Also in Toronto, Hillel Ontario called on Toronto Metropolitan University to investigate Dr. Maher El-Masri, who has served as the director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, because, the group contended, he has “repeatedly engaged with and spread extreme, antisemitic, and deeply polarizing content on his social media account.”

The National Post’s Ari Blaff in an article on June 12, 2025 quoted social media posts from an account Hillel claimed belongs to Dr. Maher El-Masri, who has been the director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. One message concerned a post about Noa Marciano, an Israeli intelligence soldier abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, who later died in captivity. “This is what is so scary about people like her,” the TMU professor wrote. “They look so normal and innocent, but they hide monstrous killers in their sick, brainwashed minds.” Israel, he asserted a day after the Hillel notice, “is a baby killer state. It always has been.”

The Quebec Jewish Physicians Association (AMJQ) is fighting antisemitism in that province. Montreal cardiologist Dr. Lior Bibas, who also teaches at Université de Montréal, co-founded the group in the weeks following the October 7 terrorist attack. They feel young doctors have been bearing the brunt of anti-Israel sentiment since then. “We heard that trainees were having a hard time,” he told Joel Ceausu of the Canadian Jewish News Feb. 3. “We saw a worsening of the situation and were hearing stories of trainees removed from study groups, others put on the defensive about what’s happening,” and some saw relationships with residents deteriorating very quickly. 

Dr. Bibas thinks there are similarities with Ontario counterparts. “Trainees are getting the brunt of all this. Their entire training ecosystem — relationships with peers and physicians — has changed.” Whether anti-Zionist remarks, blaming Jews for Israel’s actions, or other behaviour, it can be debilitating in a grueling academic and career setting. The fear of retaliation is so strong, that some students were unwilling to report incidents, even anonymously.

Jewish physicians have now founded a national umbrella group, the Canadian Federation of Jewish Medical Associations (CFJMA), linking the provinces, and representing over 2,000 Jewish physicians and medical learners, advocating for their interests and promoting culturally safe care for Jewish patients. And “it’s really been nonstop, given that we have a lot of issues,” Dr. Bibas told me in a conversation June 17. “People have been feeling that there’s been a weaponization of health care against Israel.”

He stressed that health care should remain politically neutral – meetings are an inappropriate venue in which to talk about the war in Gaza, he stated, and “this will just lead to arguments.” Nor should doctors, nurses and hospital staff wear pins with Palestinian maps or flags. And no Jewish patient being wheeled into an operating room should see this “symbol of hate.” 

On Jan. 6, a group of Montreal-area medical professionals walked off the job to protest outside Radio-Canada offices, calling for an arms embargo, ceasefire and medical boycotts of Israel. Those who could not attend were encouraged to wear pins and keffiyehs to work. When asked if such a walkout should be sanctioned, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé’s office had no comment. Neither did the Collège des médecins (CDM) that governs professional responsibilities. The leadership of many institutions have remained passive.

B’nai Brith Canada recently exposed a group channel, hosted on the social media platform Discord, in which Quebec students engaged in antisemitic, racist, misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric. More than 1,400 applicants to Quebec medical schools, as well as currently enrolled medical school students, were in the group, which was ostensibly set up to support students preparing for admission to Quebec’s four medical programs. “I saw it, and it’s vile,” remarked Dr. Bibas, noting how brazenly some of the commentators expressed themselves, using Islamist rhetoric and Nazi-era imagery, such as referring to Anne Frank as “the rat in the attic.”

Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism (DARA) said in a statement, “These messages are the direct result of the inaction and prolonged silence of medical school and university leaders across Canada since October 7, 2023, in the face of the meteoric rise of antisemitism in their institutions. Silence is no longer an option. Quebec’s medical schools and universities must act immediately. These candidates must not be admitted to medical school.” DARA member Dr. Philip Berger stated that “there’s been a free flow, really, an avalanche of anti-Israel propaganda, relentlessly sliding into Canadian medical faculties and on university campuses.”

In Winnipeg, a valedictory speech delivered to the 2024 class of medical school students graduating from the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba on May 16, 2024 set off a storm of controversy, as reported by Bernie Bellan in this newspaper. It involved a strongly worded criticism of Israel by Dr. Gem Newman. “I call on my fellow graduates to oppose injustice -and violence — individual and systemic” in Palestine, “where Israel’s deliberate targeting of hospitals and other civilian infrastructure has led to more than 35,000 deaths and widespread famine and disease.” The newspaper noted that “loud cheers erupted at that point from among the students.”

 The next day, the dean of the college, Dr. Peter Nickerson, issued a strongly worded criticism of Dr. Newman’s remarks. On Monday, May 20, Ernest Rady, who made a donation of $30 million to the University of Manitoba in 2016, and whose father, Max Rady, now has his name on the school, sent an email in response to Dr. Newman’s remarks.

“I write to you today because I was both hurt and appalled by the remarks the valedictorian, Gem Newman, gave at last week’s Max Rady College of Medicine convocation, and I was extremely disappointed in the University’s inadequate response. Newman’s speech not only dishonored the memory of my father, but also disrespected and disparaged Jewish people as a whole, including the Jewish students who were in attendance at that convocation.”

In subsequent weeks Jewish physicians in Manitoba organized themselves into a new group, “The Jewish Physicians of Manitoba.” As Dr. Michael Boroditsky, who was then President of Doctors Manitoba, noted, “Jewish physicians in cities across Canada and the U.S. have been forming formal associations in response to heightened antisemitism following the Hamas massacre of October 7.”

After October 7, Jewish students at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine reported exposure to repeated antisemitic posts by peers on social media, being subject to antisemitic presentations endorsed by faculty during mandatory classes, social exclusion and hateful targeting by university-funded student groups, and removal from learning environments or opportunities subsequent to antisemitic tirades made by faculty in public spaces. 

In addition to online vitriol, medical students have been subject to antisemitic actions coordinated by university-funded student groups with physician-faculty support under the guise of advocating against the actions of the Israeli government. All instances of discrimination, they stated in a brief, have been witnessed by and/or reported to senior leadership of the medical school without incurring condemnation of the discrimination.

In Vancouver, social media posts vilifying Israel and espousing Jew hatred were circulated by physicians at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia, noted an article in the National Post of May 25, 2025. Allegations included Christ-killing, organ trafficking, and other nefarious conspiracies supposedly hatched by Jewish doctors. Some asserted that Jewish faculty should not be allowed to adjudicate resident matching because the examining doctors were Jewish and might be racist. 

In November of 2023, one-third of all UBC medical students signed a petition endorsing this call. Jewish learners who refused to sign were harassed by staff and students on social media. When challenged, the Dean of the medical faculty refused to recognize antisemitism as a problem at UBC or to meet with the representatives of almost 300 Jewish physicians who had signed a letter expressing concern about the tolerance of Jew hatred, and the danger of a toxic hyper-politicized academic environment. This led to the public resignation of Dr. Ted Rosenberg, a senior Jewish faculty member.

Here in the Maritimes, things seem less dire. I spoke to Dr. Ian Epstein, a faculty member in the Division of Digestive Care & Endoscopy at the Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. He helps coordinate a group supporting Jewish and Israeli faculty, residents and medical students. 

“Our group is certainly aware of growing antisemitism. Many are hiding their Jewish identities. There have been instances resulting in Jewish and Israeli students being excluded and becoming isolated. It has been hard to have non-Jewish colleagues understand. That said our group has come together when needed, and we have not faced some of the same challenges as larger centres,” Dr. Epstein told me. Dalhousie has also taken a stand against academic boycotts of Israel, which some view as a form of antisemitism.  The University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown has just opened a new medical school. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen here.

Lior Bibas in Montreal indicated that his group is worried “not only as Jewish doctors and professionals, but for Jewish patients who are more than ever concerned with who they’re meeting.” Can we really conceive of a future where you’re not sure if “the doctor will hate you now?”

Henry Srebrnik is a political science professor at the University of Prince Edward Island.

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I Speak “Jew”

Morrocan Jewish fish dish

By MARK E. PAULL I grew up in Montreal. Born in 1956. Anglo by birth, sure. But that never quite fit. I don’t speak “Anglo” the way they mean it. My real language is Jew.
And I don’t mean Hebrew or Yiddish. I mean the language of reading the room before you enter it. The code-switching, shame-dodging, laugh-first-so-they-don’t-pounce dialect we pick up early. It’s a language built on side-eyes and timing and ten generations of tension.
I speak French—enough to make myself understood. Enough to charm a dinner table, crack a joke, get someone’s uncle to nod. I’m not fluent, but I’m fast. Doesn’t matter. In Quebec, language isn’t grammar—it’s inheritance. It’s who your grandfather cursed out in a hardware store.
To the Francophones, I’ll never be one of them. My accent betrays me before I say a word. I’m just an Anglo. And not even that, really. Because when the lens tightens, when they look closely, I’m just un Juif. Just a Jew.
And to the Anglos? Same thing. I can wear the suit, speak the Queen’s English, order the wine properly—still a Jew. Even in rooms where I “pass,” I don’t belong. I’m not invited in to be myself. I’m invited in to behave. To be safe. To not say the thing that makes the air stiff.
We’re the only people still called by our religion. No one says “Orthodox” for a Greek. No one says “Vatican” for an Italian. No one calls a Black man “Baptist” before they see his face. But “Jew”? That sticks. That’s the label. Before passport. Before language. Before hello.
I’ve mostly made peace with that. But there’s still this ache—knowing you can live your whole life in a place and never really be from there.
Let me tell you a story.
We had this block party once—the folding-table, paper-plate kind. Kids zipping by on scooters. Music low. Everyone asked to bring something from “your culture.”
The Greek guy brought lemon potatoes and lamb—felt like it came with a side of Byzantine history. The Italians brought two lasagnas—meat and veggie—with basil placed like confetti. The Vietnamese couple brought shrimp rolls that vanished before they hit the table. Even the German guy—built like a fridge—brought bratwurst and a six-pack with gothic lettering.
And then us.
My partner made Moroccan fish. Her grandmother’s recipe. Red with tomatoes, garlic, cumin. Studded with olives and preserved lemon. I brought a bottle of white wine. Dry. Crisp. From the Golan Heights. Not Manischewitz. Not even close.
We laid it out. Someone leaned over: “Moroccan? But I thought you were Jewish.”
We smiled. “We are.”
Then: “So… where’s the brisket? Isn’t Jewish wine supposed to be sweet?”
That’s when it hits you. No matter how long you’ve lived here, how many snowstorms you’ve shoveled through, you’re still explaining yourself. Still translating your presence.
Because they don’t know. They don’t know Jews came from everywhere. That “Jewish” isn’t one dish—it’s a whole map. That we had Jews in Morocco before there was even a France. That some of us grew up on kreplach, some on kefta. That some of our mothers sang in Yiddish, others in Arabic, and some in both—depending on who was knocking.
They don’t know. And worse—they don’t ask.
And that’s the part that gets you. Not the slurs. Not the graffiti. Not even the occasional muttered cliché. It’s the blankness. The shrug. The image they already have of you that’s built out of dreidels and sitcoms.
“Jewish” as nostalgic. As novelty. Something they saw once on a bagel.
Sometimes, when those questions come, I float. One version of me walks out. Another turns into a mouse. One turns into a Frisbee. Just gone. Not mad. Just tired.
Because being a Jew isn’t cute. It’s not nostalgic.
It’s ancient.
Before Montreal.
Before France.
Before Poland. Before Spain.
Before pogroms.
Before ghettos.
Before Hitler.
Before even the word Europe.
We were there.
Go back to the 5th century. 2nd century.
Go back to Jesus—our kid, by the way.
Go further—Babylon. Persia.
Keep going—Temple. Exile. Wandering.
And still, after all that, I’m at a table in Quebec explaining why our fish has cumin in it.
It’s almost funny. If it didn’t wear you down a little.
I’m not looking for pity. This isn’t a complaint.
I’m proud. I know what I carry. I walk into any room with five thousand years behind me. I come from people who kept the lights on through every kind of darkness—and laughed through it, too.
But sometimes, I just wish I didn’t have to explain so much.
All I want is to put down my dish…
…and hear someone say:
“That smells amazing. Tell me the story.”

That’s all.


Mark E. Paull, C.A.C. is a Certified ADHD Coach – IPHM, CMA, IIC&M, CPD Certified
Writer | Lived-Experience Advocate | Type 1 Diabetic since 1967

He has been published in:
The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Folklife Magazine, Times of Israel, CHADD’s Attention Magazine, The Good Men Project

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