Features
In the case of “The Ninth Terrorist”, how closely does art imitate life?
By BERNIE BELLAN A while back I was sent a link by reader Morley Bernstein to a very interesting story that happened to be on the CBC website. The story was about longtime hockey guru Sherry Bassin, who has spent a good part of his life managing hockey teams at various levels.
This particular story had to do with an episode in Bassin’s life that happened in 1983, when he was the assistant coach and general manager of Canada’s national junior team.
When I read the story my first thought was to try to obtain reprint rights from the CBC itself. But, to my chagrin, the CBC wanted way more than I was prepared to pay to reprint that story, so I decided not to do pursue that avenue.
Then, I began reading “The Ninth Terrorist”. If you read my accompanying review on the opposite page you’ll see that a good part of that book also has to do with a hockey tournament in Russia and, as was the case with Sherry Bassin, about a Canadian Jew wanting to help Russian Jews through subterfuge.
Here, in a nutshell, is what Sherry Bassin did back in 1983. What follows is based upon that original CBC story, written by someone by the name of Gary Waleik. My story also includes references to a phone conversation I had with Sherry, with whom I was able to get in touch from his Oshawa home.
What transpired in 1983 was Canada’s national junior team’s going to Leningrad to play in the World Junior Championship that year. About a month before the tournament was to begin, Sherry told me, he had the idea that he could do something useful for the Jewish community of Leningrad.
He decided to purchase a great many tallisim (prayer shawls) and sidurim (prayer books), all at his own expense, and smuggle them into Russia.
I asked Sherry what motivated him to do that – especially considering that he was taking a great risk that, if discovered, he could be arrested?
He said to me that his father had come to Canada from Ukraine. When his father was only seven, Sherry told me, he was sitting on a watertower with some friends in his hometown one day, when a pogrom broke out. To his father’s horror, he watched as Ukrainians and Jews fought a bloody battle, leaving many Jews dead. Seeing that left an indelible mark on Bassin senior – but it was also something that carried over into Sherry’s identity as a Jew.
Although hockey was his passion as a youth, Sherry realized that he would never make it to the pros, so he decided to seek an education instead. According to Gary Waleik’s story, “Bassin earned a Juris Doctorate, a Masters in hospital administration and a Ph.D in pharmacy. He spent decades as a college professor, pharmacist, junior hockey coach and team general manager. He also worked as a television color commentator and served as assistant general manager of the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques.”
Then, as already noted, in 1983, Bassin took upon himself the mitzvah of transporting sidurim and tallisim to what was then still the Soviet Union.
He hid the religious articles among the hockey bags of the players on the team – with their consent. But, as Waelik describes in his article, “In December 1982, with the beginning of the tournament just days away, the Canadian team boarded a train in Helsinki bound for Leningrad. When it reached the Russian border Bassin recalls, ‘The soldiers came on the train. One was a commissioned officer, and two of his assistants. And they’re holding rifles. One guy’s pointing it at me.’ ”
The soldiers confiscated the bags, much to Bassin’s chagrin. He knew he would have to get to them before any Soviet official did, so Bassin had to act quickly. According to Waelik’s article, Bassin was asked to produce a lineup of the Canadian team for one of the tournament organizers. Thinking quickly, Bassin said the lineup was in one of the bags that was confiscated.
However, during my phone conversation with Bassin, he had a slightly different version of what happened. He told me that he was able to get in touch with the deputy mayor of Leningrad and, at 2:30 in the morning, arrangements were made to get the hockey bags back to the team’s hotel. No one had opened them.
So, the next morning, Bassin, along with a box full of tallisim and sidurim, took a cab to the Leningrad synagogue. (There was only one synagogue, Bassin explained).
“The cab driver told me there was no way he was going to drive all the way to the synagogue (no doubt thinking the KGB had it under surveillance), so he dropped me off a block from the synagogue.”
He shlepped that heavy box to the front door of the synagogue and went inside. The 40 or so men who were there suspected he was a KGB agent, until he reassured them he wasn’t.
At that point the men began “rejoicing like you wouldn’t believe,” Bassin said. “They were dancing and singing, hugging me, and they wanted to give me an aliyah.”
The rest of Waelik’s story deals with the hockey tournament (in which Canada finished third, despite having such future stars of the NHL on the team as Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, and Dave Andreychuk).
But, in my conversation with Bassin, he recalled one more colourful anecdote. The KGB kept a constant watch on Bassin and the rest of the team, he told me. One day he wanted to take a cab from the team’s hotel and, although there were loads of cabs outside, none of them would give him a ride.
The reason, he explained, was that there was a big car parked nearby, in which a KGB agent was sitting – and who was not trying to hide his presence. When the KGB agent saw that none of the cab drivers would pick Bassin up, he himself drove over to Bassin and asked him where he was going? Bassin told him.
“Hop in,” he said to Bassin. “I’ll give you a ride.”
During the course of the ride, Bassin asked the agent where he had learned to speak English.
“I went to university in Washington,” he answered. The agent went on to explain that different agents would get sent to different countries to further their educations and learn the languages of those countries.
While Bassin could certainly have taken pride in revealing what he had done to help Soviet Jews back in 1983, he kept what happened to himself for years afterward (although his wife had been aware of his plan, he told me, and had offered her full support. He also only told his father what he had done after he returned from Russia.)
“I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble,” he said to me – in case Russian authorities would have heard about his escapade and exacted some form of punishment upon the Jews of Leningrad who had met Bassin.
While “The Ninth Terrorist” tells a different story, the parallels between fiction and reality in that hockey tournaments in Russia provided perfect cover for subterfuge in both the book and, in Sherry Bassin’s case – in reality, that ended up helping Jews in that country, and which certainly makes for interesting reading.
Features
Arnold Zeal – the road from Kenora To Jacksonville
By GERRY POSNER For Arnold Allan Zeal, his journey through life, though it officially started in Winnipeg in 1943, really began in Kenora, Ontario. Arnold and his sister Marilyn, children of Charlie and Sula ( Bernstein) Zeal, were raised in their early years in Kenora, where Charlie had set up business as owner of a department store: Zeal and Gold. He later became a hotel proprietor (the Kenricia Hotel, still standing to this day and familiar to readers who know Kenora). When Arnold was 12, the family moved to Winnipeg so that Arnold could have a bar mitzvah there. The family lived on Cordova in River Heights.
Arnold soon integrated into Winnipeg life. Oddly, he did not attend Kelvin, where most Jewish kids in the south end of Winnipeg went to high school at that time – since Grant Park High School was not yet built. Zeal attended Gordon Bell High School across the Assiniboine River. At the time he was one of only five Jewish students there. (The others were: Les Allen, Ivan Brodsky, Larry Leonoff and Allan Berkal.)
After high school, Zeal made his way to the University of Manitoba, where he took Science and graduated – first with a BSc, later a Masters of Science in Microbiology/Biochemistry. Following completion of his Masters degree he was accepted into medical school at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1970.
In those days, once you finished your formal schooling, you had to do a rotating internship. Arnold did his at the Winnipeg General Hospital (later the Health Sciences Centre). He found himself attracted to neurosurgery, one of the most demanding areas in medicine.
It was then that he came under the tutelage of the renowned Drs. Dwight Parkinson and Rankin Hay, also occasionally another famous doctor, Norman Hill – when he came to HSC to do paediatric cases. Zeal completed his residency in neurosurgery at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre, followed up by successfully passing the American Board of Neurological Surgery written examination. He then left to take a research fellowship in Microvascular Neurological Surgery at the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1976.
In 1977, Zeal moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he became acting chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at University Hospital, an affiliate of the University of Florida (now called UF Jacksonville). After 2 1/2 years there, he left to enter private practice in neurological surgery in Jacksonville.
Over the next couple of years, he became qualified to sit for the oral portion of the examination for the American Board of Neurological Surgeons and the result was that Arnold Zeal was then “ Board Certified in Neurological Surgery.” (Just the names of these boards scare me; no wonder I never entered that field.)
Zeal subsequently obtained fellowships from the American College of Surgeons, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the American Heart Association. To say Arnold Zeal was well qualified would be an understatement.
Along the way, he took out memberships in various medical associations, including the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, in addition to belonging to multiple regional medical societies in Florida. In 1977, Zeal entered into private practice in Jacksonville, Florida. He became chairman of the Neurosurgery Department in several Jacksonville hospitals, primarily Baptist Center, the largest medical centre hospital in Northeast Florida, where he served as chairman for 15 years. As well, Zeal wrote several prominent papers in peer-reviewed journals. In short, he was a busy guy. Also, something else of interest – starting in 1995, Arnold served as the neurological consultant to the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL, filling that role for the first eight years from the team’s inception.
It was during his residency that Arnold married his wife Janet, then a Surgical- ICU Nurse at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre. They became the parents of four highly accomplished sons. Given the demands of neurosurgery, Arnold was not able to spend as much time parenting as he might have preferred and he is quick to point out the fact that the boys turned out as well as they did is directly attributable to his wife of 52 years, Janet Zeal. Janet herself managed to obtain an additional college degree, develop her own business, and manage Arnold’s practice, all in addition to raising the four boys and supporting Arnold.
For over 40 years, Arnold was occupied in Jacksonville as a neurosurgeon. With his busy schedule he was often having to perform surgery at late hours for long periods on his feet, all with total concentration. As one can imagine, sometimes those surgeries are complex, requiring careful decisions in advance of and during the surgery, also leading the surgeon to make instant decisions if things changed during the course of the surgery. (I get nervous just writing about that kind of situation.)
Due to a shoulder injury, Arnold retired from operating, but he continued to evaluate office patients. He remained focused on Gamma Knife surgical procedures until his full retirement in late 2017. Even after retiring from the operating room, he remained active in the field, participating in conferences with his partners and colleagues. He says that he has now managed to get used to getting a full night’s sleep without receiving a call to get to the hospital for an emergency operation.
I asked Arnold what the key qualities were to becoming a successful neurosurgeon? He didn’t hesitate in answering, saying you have to be caring and have what he calls the three “A’s”- Availability, Affability and Ability. He added that you must possess lots of stamina, have good hands (I’m eliminated on that count alone), plus be dedicated to your work. He had them all. Ask anyone who knew Arnold Zeal and what you would hear about him was that he was an excellent diagnostician and had great manual dexterity.
Arnold has no lack of activities these days. Janet and Arnold have their four sons living not far away and, with five grandchildren, they are kept occupied. Aside from all that, he loves to come back to Winnipeg when he can – especially for medical reunions. And – he truly treasures the opportunities to return to his youthful days in Kenora. He knows the Lake of the Woods as if it were the inside of a brain. In short, he is quite comfortable operating a boat as well as operating on the brain!
Features
Expelled Oberlin Chabad rabbi says he ‘made a mistake’ with explicit social media chats
A police report obtained by the Forward sheds light on the removal of a Chabad rabbi from the campus of Oberlin College last week, after the school administration became aware of a police report that alleged he engaged in sexually explicit conversations online concerning minors.
Rabbi Scott (Shlomo) Elkan, former co-director of Oberlin Chabad, allegedly received sexually explicit texts, photos and videos through the messaging app Kik concerning three young people, ages 7, 12 and 13, according to the report.
In December 2025 messages to an adult on the platform, Elkan allegedly responded to photos of someone giving a child a bath. The person he chatted with alluded to touching the child’s genitals and said he had been aroused when the child was sitting on his lap, the report stated.
According to the Oberlin Police Department report, Elkin shared photos of girls as part of the chat. The department closed the case after a 20-day investigation, with no charges filed.
In a phone interview with the Forward, Elkan said he regretted his participation in the chat, but that his messages were not based on real events. He did not address the photos.
“To be clear, what had happened was an online chat with an anonymous adult on purely fictional, you know, fantastical things that’s not rooted in any kind of reality whatsoever,” Elkan said. “And I entered that, and I should not have, and I take responsibility for that.”
Elkan added that he has been engaged in “professional care and spiritual counseling to deal with all of the stresses and all of the factors that led me to engaging in an unhealthy behavior.”
According to the report, in an interview with police, Elkan confirmed the Kik account belonged to him and said the chats were “escapism” from the stress of his everyday life. He denied ever viewing or possessing child pornography.
Elkan told the Forward that “oftentimes people think of rabbis as godlike and infallible,” and he “made a mistake in one of the weakest few moments of my life.”
“There was no crime. Nothing illegal. Poor judgment, yes,” Elkan said. “And there’s not a victim. The victims here are the Jewish community and my family.”
The fallout on campus
Oberlin president Carmen Twillie Ambar wrote an email last week alerting students and staff of the news that Elkan, who had worked at Oberlin Chabad since 2010, had been banned from campus — without sharing specifics.
“In the police report, Elkan admits to egregious actions in his personal life — including engaging in online sexual conversations concerning children and objectionable behavior,” Ambar wrote. “This behavior violates Oberlin’s values, shocks the conscience, and makes it clear that we cannot allow him continued access to our campus and community.”
Elkan criticized how Oberlin handled the situation, saying the email that the college sent to the community about his departure was vague and allowed speculation to spread. He also said the email was made public during the meeting in which campus officials informed him that he had been banned.
“That’s where my hurt, and I think so much of the hurt of the community lies. Because every time we stuck our neck out for the college, and every time we work for the best interest of them and the community, what feels like the very first opportunity they had to show us that same support, they chose a very different route,” Elkan said. “So I take responsibility for my actions, and I hold the college incredibly responsible for how this has played out.”
Andrea Simakis, a spokesperson for Oberlin, said in a statement that representatives of the college met with Elkan via Zoom just prior to releasing the campus message “to let him know we were going to send it, why we were sending it, and that we were banning him from campus.”
Simakis added that the language in the campuswide email “reflects the information in the police report, which we obtained through a public records request.”
Along with serving as a Chabad rabbi, Elkan also certified Oberlin’s kosher kitchen and sometimes led Passover services and other religious celebrations on campus, according to Ambar’s email.
Chabad rabbis are not typically employed by universities, instead operating independently through the Chabad umbrella, with Chabad functioning as recognized campus religious organizations.
Elkan resigned from his position with Chabad last Friday, a Chabad spokesperson told the Forward. Chabad did not provide further comment.
In the email to the community, Ambar said Oberlin had not previously received reports concerning Elkan’s behavior and was now asking a third party to investigate whether members of the campus community had been affected.
Ambar added that the news would be especially difficult for “those who sought spiritual leadership and guidance from Elkan,” but “the seriousness of this matter requires clear and swift action.” Rabbi Allison Vann, who had led High Holy Day services on campus with Cleveland Hillel, will work with students for the remainder of the semester.
The post Expelled Oberlin Chabad rabbi says he ‘made a mistake’ with explicit social media chats appeared first on The Forward.
This story originally said that Elkan posted images of children in a bath. He was a recipient.Features
A Christian Debate About Israel
By HENRY SREBRNIKThe Western neo-Marxist attacks on Israel, in league with Islamism, are of course a grave political and military danger, but their ideology can be rebuked by anyone with the slightest knowledge of actual history. “Jesus was a Palestinian”? “Israelis are white settler-colonialists”? These are almost jokes.
Such people don’t even know that the Zionist movement in fact rejected what was called “territorialism,” the project to build a Jewish homeland anywhere – in Argentina, western Australia, and elsewhere in the world. This included the so-called “Uganda Proposal” in east Africa, which was voted down at a World Zionist Congress in 1905.
Another territorialist plan, pushed by Communists in the 1920s, was for a Jewish Autonomous Region in the Soviet Union known as Birobidzhan. This came to fruition but ended up a complete failure. Jews were not interested in places outside their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
Antisemitic rhetoric today appears on the progressive left in rhetoric that casts Zionism as malevolence, but also on the populist right in conspiratorial language about hidden power and divided loyalty, some harkening back to religious language we though was long gone.
The left’s arguments are shallow and, while extremely concerning, are fallacious. But the theological debates on the right are more alarming, because they will affect America’s relations with Israel. They go right back to genuine issues regarding the place of Jews and Christians in their respective religious worldviews and interactions. They are at the heart of “everything” in western history.
So-called Christian Zionism, found particularly in Protestant theology, sees the creation of Israel as part of God’s plan to hasten the coming of Jesus as the messiah at end times. Obviously, this is not congruent with our understanding of the messianic age, but politically it has been largely beneficial to Israel.
There is a deeper theological divide separating Catholics and evangelicals, the latter among the Jewish state’s most fervent supporters. Evangelicals tend to see Israel as the fulfillment of God’s pledge to the Jewish people, and they view that fulfillment as intertwined with their own religious identity. In contrast, most Catholics do not believe they have a theological obligation to support Israel.
Classical Christian antisemitism (really, anti-Judaism) is rooted in two propositions: that Jews bear the guilt for Christ’s death, and that when the majority of Jews rejected Jesus (who was a Jew, as were all his early apostles), God replaced the covenant with the children of Abraham with a new covenant, with Christians. This idea of a new bond that excludes the Jewish people is called “supersessionism” or “replacement theology.”
It consists of the claim that the Church has replaced the Jewish people as God’s covenanted, or chosen, people. According to supersessionism, Jesus inaugurated a new conception of “Israel,” one open to all, Gentile as well as Jew, because it was predicated on faith rather than the rejected markers of biological descent and observance of the law.
The Roman Catholic Church modified this stance with its historic document Nostra Aetate, promulgated in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council. It expressed some recognition of the Jews’ special relationship with the God of Israel. Though the statement recounts the fact that most Jews did not “accept the Gospel,” it also declares that “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their fathers.”
This has been further elaborated. Pope John Paul II said that the Catholic Church has “a relationship” with Judaism “which we do not have with any other religion.” He also said that Judaism is “intrinsic” and not “extrinsic” to Christianity, and that Jews were Christians’ “elder brothers” in the faith.
Pope Benedict XVI explicitly rejected the idea that the Jewish people “ceased to be the bearer of the promises of God.” The Catholic Church states that “The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked.”
But now we see some of those earlier positions re-emerging, and not just among antisemites like Tucker Carlson. This is troubling and should not be ignored. On Jan. 17, for example, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches of Jerusalem, an assembly of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders, released a statement referring to Christian Zionism as a “damaging” ideology.
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, a Catholic commentator with more than two million YouTube subscribers, released a video in which he reiterated the older position on Israel: “I don’t think that the Jews are entitled to the Holy Land because of some religious premise. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, being Christian, I believe the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament; Christ is the new covenant.” Catholics are not supposed to believe that Jews have a divine right to the Holy Land because, Knowles stated, Jews do not enjoy God’s favour and are not in fact God’s people any longer.
As Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large for the website Tablet Magazine, cautions, in “Letter to a Catholic Friend,” published Feb. 16, “What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject” such comments? “What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream.” For Jews, for Israel, and for America, that would be an unmitigated disaster.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.