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My memories of Peretz Shul

By KINZEY POSEN It was a late Friday afternoon at Peretz Shul in 1964 or so. A good friend of mine at the time whose Yiddish name was Moishe said, “That’s it! I’m not coming back to school on Monday, I’m out of here!” Ok, as an 11 year old, he might have said it in a slightly different way. It was the first day of school in September and we were just about to go home. “Sure you are Moishe, I’m sure you’ll be back on Monday,” I told him.

Grade one 150 dpi

 

Kinzey’s Grade 1 Peretz School class circa 1960
(Thanks to Sandy Shefrin for helping with identifying almost everyone; comments supplied by Kinzey)
Bottom Row crosslegged, left to right: Arthur Greenspan, unidentified, Matthew Levin (a.ka. Moishe in the story)
Second Row (l-r): Paula Wolfman, Rosa Scyzgiel, Shirley Starek, Myra Miller, Faye Golubchuk, Ruthie Rosenzweig,, Honey Leah Berman, Marcie Fleisher
Third Row (l-r): Diane McKay, Lucy Baumel, Janice Goldberg, Howard Kaplan, Sandy Shefrin, Heather Wallace, Pammy Zimmer (Kinzey’s wife, Shayla Fink’s first cousin, a beautiful person (alev hasholem)
Top row (l-r): Sidney Lieber, Martin (Kinzey) Posen, Sheldon Weidman, Harvey Zahn, Harvey Koffman (my first cousin) , Sidney Shoib, Morris Glimcher, Shawn Zell, Miss (Claire) Nelko (who is now Claire Breslaw)

Come Monday, true to his word, my friend did not come back. He had entered an alternate dimension it seemed; he was finished with Peretz Shul! Unheard of! Impossible! How did he do it? Moishe’s act of sedition was a reaction to the Yiddish teacher we had been blessed with that year and he was done. All of us in the class were in awe and Moishe, no worse for wear, having left the school, went on to become a respected ambassador for Canada’s Foreign Service.
A little while back, Bernie asked me to write about Peretz Shul from a different perspective: My own, as a student. I have often wondered why this institution. for those of us who went there, lives so large in our memories. Full disclosure: My grandmother Katya Posen Z’l, nee Gurarie, was one of the founders of Peretz Shul and a lifelong member of the Muter Farein – the women’s organization that helped establish the kindergarten and supported the school.

My father, Abe Posen, attended the school as did his sister, my aunt, Goldie Zuidema Z”l. My dad often told me stories of how various teachers at Peretz used to rent one of the rooms in their house on Burrows. To put it mildly, our family was steeped in Peretzness.
My era began in 1957 when I attended nursery school and then, kindergarten. To this day, I can still smell the matches when our teacher lit the Shabbat candles on Friday and we laid out our little mats to have a nap on. Being a socialist school for the most part, you would think Shabbat would not have been part of the school experience, but I have so many great reminiscences of those two years from making little coloured paper rings several metres long, to receiving the right colour star if we behaved. I loved getting those silver and gold ones alongside my name on the wall – wonderful, warm memories.
Our principal in those early days was Chaver Herstein – an imposing man with a wonderful head of hair and a bit of a temper. We called all our teachers by either “chaver” or “chaverteh” which, in this context, translated to “comrade”. We also called them Leher or Leheren – teacher in Yiddish. Our school was located at 601 Aikins, between Inkster and Polson Avenues. How do I remember the address? Early on as soon as we could write, we always wrote the address at the top of the left corner of the sheet of paper. Now, the building is a health community centre. Once we entered Grade One, our days were separated into half day Yiddish and half day English classes.

Grade One for me – and I am sure for my classmates, was a truly seminal experience. Pushed out of the warm bosom of kindergarten, Grade One meant getting down to serious work. Reading, see Dick run, see Jane run, see Dick and Jane run, writing, singing and my own personal challenge………arithmetic. Our Yiddish teacher, Miss Nelko, was the most beautiful woman who genuinely cared about her students. We loved her and she laid the groundwork for us learning Yiddish and how to be little menches and menchettes. Many years later, Shayla and I received a call about playing a wedding for an older couple. They came over to our house one evening and as we planned the event, it occurred to me that I knew who this woman was: My beloved Miss Nelko, some 40 years later. What a reunion it was!

Our English teacher, on the other hand, had a different style of teaching that could be best described, as adversarial. I renamed her Tyrannosaurus Rex and the invisible scars are still with me. Her approach to learning arithmetic was to say the least, extremely challenging. I was one of those kids who learned math in a different way and in those days, kids such as myself fell through the cracks and we fell deeply. All I remember is after a short explanation of one plus one equals two, etc., we all had to stand up by the blackboard as T Rex wrote a problem on the board. We could not sit down unless we put our hands up and answered correctly. Guess who was often the last kid standing? Me, of course, and I eventually memorized it all so I could finally sit down.
Another time, T Rex distributed to each of us a sheet of paper for some writing project. She gave me what we called at the time “grade one” paper. It’s where the lines were printed with one bold line and two lighter lines and then another bold line. It also had big wood chips in it. I noticed that she was also giving out what we called “grade two” paper. These were all symmetrical bold lines and I wanted one. When she finished giving them out, she asked if everyone received one and me, being me, said, “I didn’t.” My six-year-old brain conveniently forgot that my desk was in the front row and I had scrunched up the grade one paper into a ball and cleverly thought she wouldn’t see it in the wood support for the desk.
As I put my hand up and told her I didn’t get one, she approached my desk in a threatening way, reached into the desk support and said, “What is this?” I was fully chastised, and T Rex bellowed, “You will only get grade one paper for the rest of the year.”
The reality was, in those days, especially in the context of a parochial school, you sometimes had people teaching who were not trained and did not have the skills to do the job. Not only that, more than a few were survivors of the Holocaust and we eventually learned that they experienced terrible horrors in the camps and ghettos.
That being said, I had several wonderful teachers, whose voices to this day still reverberate in my head and I often reflect about their ability to connect and elevate the students.

Mrs. Gold, Mrs. Brooks and Pascal Fishman were some of them. Chaver Fishman came to us from Buenos Aires and was one of our Yiddish teachers. He had a great capacity to see potential in students and encourage them. Another of our teachers, Mrs. Wallace, taught us English and her daughter was in our class for years. The family wasn’t Jewish, but Heather my classmate, spoke Yiddish like a pro. I remember one of our later Yiddish teachers, Mrs. Korman, taught us “Zol Nit Keynmol” the Warsaw Ghetto Song, and led us in a procession to St. John’s Park in the spring, while we sang that song and others.
The year at Peretz Schul was highlighted by two major events. The annual essay contest in Yiddish and English, and the graduation, which took place towards the end of June. For each of those occasions, the auditorium would be absolutely packed and very hot. As students, we often escaped outside to cool off in the lane and we could hear what was going on by the open side doors.

The cultural offerings at Peretz were in my opinion, outstanding. We were taught so many great songs, we acted in plays and we created art. Jewish holidays were celebrated with a Yiddishe taam (Yiddish flavour). Since my Hebrew name was Mordechai/Motel, I always got the part of Mordechai in the Purim play. The music component was delivered by Chaver Bronstein or Mr. Brownstone as he was known at Talmud Torah. His classes were always held in the auditorium, where he’d stand by his easel flipping the song sheets written in Yiddish and we’d follow the words as he used his pointer. Contrary to the Talmud Torah choir experience, he never gave us names or hit us. After he retired, Mrs. Udow took over and when I hoped to join the choir, she said, “Modechai, your voice is changing, perhaps another time.”
After the principal Chaver Herstein retired, Mr. Heilik who was previously at the Calgary Peretz Shul became our new principal. He was an interesting man and because of my ‘occasional’ naughty behaviour, I got to know him a little better than most students. He was an artist. His medium was oil painting and I remember, on one occasion, we were taken out of our class and brought to the auditorium. When we arrived, we saw that all four walls had been covered with his paintings. There were dozens of them. It was a full-blown exhibition of his work.
I bring this up because I became the class artist at Peretz and my teachers often ‘commissioned’ me to draw and colour huge murals in the hallway of the school. This gave me the opportunity to get out of class. Chaver Heilik would always come out of his office to check out my work. My artistry was far below his level, but he was always encouraging and interested in what I was doing.

In my day, we all graduated from Grade Seven and you had the choice of continuing in what was called Mittel Shul. These classes were held after 4 o’clock, after you finished English school. No one in my class went to Mittel Shul and we felt sorry for those who did as they arrived at four, just as we were leaving.
For me, and I’m sure others, the experience of attending Peretz Shul, wasn’t truly appreciated until after we graduated. The real world out there wasn’t as warm and friendly as it was at 601 Aikins. I do know that the school gave me the education that my Baba and other founders were hoping to achieve: an ability to speak Yiddish, a love for the language, Jewish history known as Yiddishe geshicteh and above all, an appreciation for the Jewish people and our incredibly rich journey. I also had my Peretz Shul family, the 12 or so students in my class that I spent 35 hours a week with for nine years. We all take something different away from the experience, but I can guarantee you, many of us, including my friend Moishe the ambassador, will always carry Peretz Shul memories with us for the rest of our lives.

Post script:
Ed. note: It didn’t take me too long to figure out who the “Moishe” was to whom Kinzey refers in his article. I was actually friends myself with “Moishe”, although I knew him better as Matthew Levin.
Matthew was always very independent-minded – even as a kid. That being said, he went on to an illustrious career in Canada’s diplomatic service. Among other posts he held, he was Canada’s Ambassador to Columbia, Cuba, and most recently Spain.
It was while he was Ambassador to Cuba that Matthew, along with his wife, Rosealba, played an instrumental role in helping Cuban Jews emigrate to Israel (since Israel and Cuba did not have diplomatic relations).
When I read Kinzey’s story I decided to send it to Matthew – before I outed him as the “Moishe” in the story. Matthew was pleasantly surprised to see that Kinzey mentioned him in a story and even further that he referred to him as “Moishe”.
In my email to Matthew I mentioned that the last time I had attempted to contact him was when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister and Matthew was Canada’s Ambassador to Cuba. At the time, some low level functionaries in what is known as Global Affairs Canada interceded and said that I would not be able to communicate directly with Matthew. Instead, I was told, I could submit any questions that I had to Global Affairs, they would vet them (no doubt looking for anything that might potentially embarrass the government, such as asking about Matthew’s boyhood years in Winnipeg).
So, when I reached out to Matthew – again, this time after reading Kinzey’s piece, I said that I didn’t know whether he would even receive my email since I suspected “apparatchiks” in the government would see it first – and probably attempt to prevent me from communicating with him directly – again.
I was surprised then, to receive a very warm response from Matthew – in which he explained that he is no longer under the supervision of government “apparatchiks”.
Here’s what Matthew Levin wrote to me, in part:
Wonderful to hear from you! I’m so glad you made the effort to reach out.

I finished my posting to Spain a couple of months ago and am now back in Ottawa and transitioning to retirement. So no more apparatchiks.

First of all, I hope you’re well and coping successfully with these strange times.

Your lovely message brings back all sorts of very fond memories. It’s a long time since anyone called me Moishe (often shortened to Moish back then). I never saw most of my Peretz Shul classmates after I left the school, as Kinzey recalls, at the start of Grade 5 (a long story). Kinzey was one of the very few I did see occasionally, including a few times when he was playing with Finjan. But most of the others I completely lost touch with. Now I sometimes wonder what has become of many of them. It’s really heartwarming to think that Kinzey (Martin at the time and I believe he was Mordechai in Yiddish, or maybe Mendel) remembered me as he was writing this story. Since you and I and our group of friends never called each other by our Yiddish names I’m surprised, but delighted, that you thought of me when you saw this reference to a Moishe.
Thanks so much for sending along Kinzey’s story. I’m sending you this reply before having read it, because I didn’t want to delay getting back to you, but I’ll certainly read it with great interest and undoubtedly pleasure. I really feel honoured and delighted to be included. If you’re in touch with Kinzey, please thank him and give him a big hug – virtual of course for now – from me.

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How to read fixed, daily, and progressive jackpot labels at Betscore Casino

Modern casino lobbies feature distinctive jackpot tags designed for easy recognition across various game tiles. Browsing through Bet Score, you will see that the platform uses a consistent system to present fixed, daily, and progressive jackpot displays. This brief guide explains how these labels are typically formatted, offering visual cues so you can confidently interpret each jackpot category. Betscore Casino presents these markers in a clear and recognizable way.

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Decoding fixed and daily jackpot displays in casino lobbies

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How progressive jackpot meters stand apart and quick display checks

Within the lobby, “Progressive” jackpot labels are closely linked with animated or meter-style visual treatments. The jackpot amount is shown as an ever-increasing figure, typically larger or highlighted in a contrasting color, to draw attention to its dynamic nature. Often, the progressive badge sits beside or above this meter, so the relationship between label and rolling number is obvious and direct. In Betscore Casino, this design philosophy visually distinguishes progressive jackpots from fixed or daily options at a glance, creating an immediate sense of anticipation around the changing prize amount each time you browse the lobby.

When identifying jackpot types quickly, three main cues make reading the tags straightforward. Fixed jackpots always feature a stable, non-animated number next to their badge, keeping things simple and clear. Daily jackpots consistently add a day-based timeframe indicator, which could be text or a countdown, usually positioned close to the label for easy association. Progressive jackpots, by contrast, are marked by a running total or animated meter, making them stand out as prize amounts increase. Paying attention to these conventions, you’ll find it much easier to compare options and navigate the jackpot categories provided with confidence and efficiency.

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Some random thoughts on the AMIA bombing, Operation Solomon, Arab migration to Palestine, and Jeffrey Epstein

By BERNIE BELLAN When I received an email from an Ethiopian Jew who is now living in Winnipeg who reminded me of the incredible efforts made by so many different people to help rescue Ethiopia’s Jewish population and bring them to Israel during Operation Solomon in 1991 (Operation Solomon) I began to ask myself why that particular event doesn’t get paid more attention within our own Jewish community here?
Recently our community held another commemoration of the AMIA bombing in 1994 in Buenos Aires, which claimed the lives of 85 people (not all Jewish) and injured over 300. Each year B’nai Brith holds a solemn ceremony during which 85 candles are lit and the names of the deceased are read out.
Yes, that was a horrific tragedy, but I wonder how much it still resonates with people. There have been so many other horrible events since that AMIA bombing, including of course the massacre of October 7, but more recently there was also the Bondi Beach attack in Australia last December, during which 15 people were killed and 40 injured. Are we also going to have commemorative events held here in Winnipeg going forward to mark that particular event?

Compare the solemnity with which tragic events such as the AMIA bombing and the October 7 massacre are remembered with the total lack of celebration of something that should be as uplifting as was Operation Solomon. Could it be because Operation Solomon happened in far away Africa and the people who were rescued were black – and seemed so foreign to those of us who can even remember what happened in 1991? I don’t know whether there’s an element of racism involved in the lack of recognition anywhere of Operation Solomon, but I thought it most interesting when I was rereading articles in The Jewish Post & News written by the one individual in our Jewish community who did more to help in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews than anyone else – the late Elliot Levine, and Levine noted the total lack of support from the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council for what was known as “The Committee for Ethiopian Jews,” I couldn’t help but wonder how much race has played a part in sidelining Operation Solomon as a momentous event in the recent history of the Jewish people.
When one considers how much attention is paid to the AMIA bombing, which affected people who, simply put, look more like us, to the lack of attention paid to Operation Solomon – well, I think you get my point.
The Ethiopian Jewish community now living in Israel has had a difficult time being accepted by mainstream Israelis, but over the years many members of that community have made significant contributions to Israeli society and the more recent descendants of the original Jews who were brought to Israel are now proud Israelis. It would be nice for our own community to hold some sort of event to mark Operation Solomon, since it is now the 35th year since that momentous achievement occurred.

Speaking of past achievements, the furor over the Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has continued to spark heated discussion. I’ve received a number of emails from various members of our community responding to articles I’ve written about the Nakba exhibit (and in some cases articles written by others that have appeared in the Jewish Post). I don’t mind admitting that I’m not at all sure where I stand on the whole issue of the Nakba exhibit. I can see the merits of arguments that have been made on both sides of the issue and I try to keep an open mind as I hear different perspectives. But, no matter what argument is being made, I encourage everyone to listen to what people have to say and think carefully about the pros and cons of the particular points being made.
As I noted in an earlier column, rather than descending into an argument over which group has a more valid reason to feel aggrieved – Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes in Palestine (and I’m not going to debate whether the majority left willingly or not; that’s an issue that will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction) or Jews who were forced to leave their homes in Arab lands, I’d rather concentrate on thinking about where can we go from here?
Unfortunately, the clear consensus in Israel now seems to be that there can never be a Palestinian state and even those politicians who might have been willing to enter into at least some sort of discussion about the possible creation of a Palestinian state have moved so far to the right – in response to the clear shift in public opinion in Israel that sees no room for even contemplating a Palestinian state, that the issue of a future Palestinian state has been completely taken off the table.
At the same time though, as much as I’m generally sympathetic to the Palestinian aspiration to have a state of their own, just as I prefer to refer to historical evidence when it comes to debating what actually happened during the “Nakba,” I also like to look at the evidence surrounding just how many true Palestinians there are.
By that, I mean how many people who call themselves Palestinians can trace their roots back to the actual land which can be referred to as “Palestine.” Remember that there was no such thing as “Palestine” per se until the British Mandate over Palestine began officially in 1923. Prior to that what we now regard as “Palestine” was simply part of the Ottoman Empire.
According to figures compiled by one of the pre-eminent experts on demographic in the Ottoman Empire, Professor Justin McCarthy, there were approximately 500,000 Arabs in what is referred to as Palestine at the turn of the 20th Century, while there were approximately 23,000 Jews.
By 1945 the Arab population of Palestine had grown by over 600,000 to approximately 1,100,000 while the Jewish population had grown to over 550,000. There is much debate over whether a good part of the increase in the Arab population was due to the surge in economic activity brought on by the influx of Jews, but let’s leave that argument aside for the moment. A point that I made in another column about the Arab population of Palestine at the time when Israel was declared a state is that approximately 750,000 Arabs left what had been Palestine – but whether they left voluntarily or not was irrelevant to me. What was relevant to me, I emphasized, was that there could not have been a “Jewish” state with a majority Arab population.
I have heard nothing from those who would criticize the Nakba exhibit at the CMHR about that point.
Again – as I noted previously, I’m not arguing the morality of what happened to the Palestinians; I’m simply making the observation that Israel could not have come about had those 750,000 Arabs who did leave had chosen to stay. I don’t suppose my making that point makes one whit of difference to anyone who is criticizing the CMHR exhibit. I just wanted to reiterate my support for looking at what happened in 1948 objectively. And I’m well aware that even suggesting that one can be “objective” about such a contentious issue is up for debate – but can’t we even try for a little objectivity?

Finally, what about Jeffrey Epstein – and what’s he got to do with everything I’ve just written?
Well, it was the persistently nagging questions surrounding Epstein’s relationship with Trump that led directly to Trump deciding to join in with Netanyahu and attack Iran. Trump was desperate to “change the channel,” especially when so many of his diehard MAGA supporters kept asking questions about why Trump was so keen to put the Epstein issue aside. So now Trump is caught up in a war that he thought would divert attention from Epstein, but the most likely scenario is that he’ll end up trying to bring the war to a conclusion by ceding control over the Hormuz Strait to Iran and abandoning the notion of forcing Iran to give up its quest for a nuclear weapon. And if the only way to reduce Trump’s march toward total authoritarianism is to elect enough Democrats to at least take over the House of Representatives then what we’re going to see is a bunch of “woke” Democrats in Congress who will be wanting to end American support for Israel – and, they’ll be pushing for a Palestinian state.
Thank you, Jeffrey Epstein, for being the cause of this whole mess.

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35 years ago 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were rescued and brought to Israel in a short, but brilliant 36-hour operation

By BERNIE BELLAN My memory of an event that took place 35 years ago was jogged recently when I received an email from someone who himself was one of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews who were brought to safety in Israel during what was known as “Operation Solomon.”
That individual wrote that he wanted to thank me for articles I had written over the years, including about the rescue of Ethiopian Jews.
Here is part of what he wrote: “I am an Ethiopian Jew who live in Winnipeg. I recently came across Bernie Bellan’s articles and i was very fascinated by the depth of them and the fact they are informative and educational. I am not sure if he wrote anything about the thousands old dream of Ethiopian Jews who at the end reached their destination Israel. Thanks to operations Solomon and Moses that airlifted the Ethiopian Jews to become Israel’s citizens. I personally am grateful for the support i got from a couple of Jewish individuals in Winnipeg….My ancestors were hiding who they were in Ethiopia and i will never stop from telling who i am and my support for Israel. Please tell Bernie i said hello and i pray for his health so that he will continue sharing his knowledge. Little did he know that one day an Ethiopian Jew will read one of his articles.”
Reading that email led me to look back at articles that appeared in The Jewish Post & News around the time of Operation Solomon, also a later article that I wrote in 2013 about Israeli Brigadier General Eden Attias, who was deeply involved in Operation Solomon and who appeared at an event in Winnipeg that year.

The late Professor Elliot Levine

I would be remiss, however, to write anything about Operation Solomon without mentioning the absolutely pivotal role that the late Professor Elliot Levine played in orchestrating support among some Winnipeg Jews to help in the rescue of Ethiopian Jews. I found two articles Levine had written around the time of that incredible rescue effort in which he described the clandestine work in which he – and several other Winnipeggers were involved in reaching out to Ethiopian Jews at a time when anyone in Ethiopia who openly announced they were Jewish put their lives in peril.
To begin with, here’s some background about what led to Operation Solomon – taken from my 2013 article about Israeli Brigadier General Eden Attias. General Attias had played a key role in Operation Solomon, including having been on the ground in Ethiopia during the actual rescue operation. He was introduced at that 2013 event by the late Yude Heneleff.

“Henteleff gave a brief overview of Operation Solomon: ”In 1991 the Ethiopian government was threatened with being toppled,’ explained Henteleff.
“For several years previous Israeli operatives had been secretly working in Ethiopia to procure the escape of as many ‘Falasha’ Jews as possible (whom Henteleff noted should be rightfully referred to as ‘Beth Israel’.)
“Concerned that a new government would put a stop to this ongoing exodus of Ethiopian Jews, the Israeli government decided to implement a bold plan to ferry out as many Jews as possible in a condensed period before the window of opportunity was closed.
“Thus ‘Operation Solomon was born and carried out with precision. It involved the use of 34 aircraft, including several El Al passenger aircraft, as well as Israeli Air Force planes. In 36 hours the planes carried over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to safety in Israel. In fact one Boeing 747 set the record for the most passengers ever transported on one aircraft when 1,122 passengers were crammed into the plane.
“During his talk Gen. Attias gave a detailed explanation of the events leading up to Operation Solomon, beginning as far back as 1862, when a group of Ethiopian Jews began the trek to Israel through the hostile territory of Sudan. Very few actually survived that journey, Attias noted.
“Through the years there had been various other attempts to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel, with the most notable effort prior to Operation Solomon being ‘Operation Moses’, which was carried out in 1984. That operation was undertaken with the complicity of the Sudanese government and involved Mossad agents working to bring Ethiopian Jews to secret departure points in Sudan. Unfortunately members of the Israeli media learned of the operation and, even though they were asked to withhold revealing what they knew, went ahead and published details. That brought the operation to a sudden end, and with the rescue of only 7,000 Jews.”

Prior to Operation Solomon Ethiopia had been engulfed in a civil war that had contributed to mass starvation and brutal violence. In 1991 the Marxist regime that had been in power was threatened with being toppled and there was heightened concern within Israel – also in many communities in the diaspora, for the safety of Ethiopia’s Jewish population. As has already been noted, there had been other efforts to rescue Ethiopian Jews, but with mixed results. Thus, the bold plan to rescue as many Ethiopian Jews in one fell swoop was hatched. But in order to bring that rescue about contacts had to be made within the Ethiopian Jewish community.
How those many thousands of Ethiopian Jews were contacted is in itself a totally fascinating story. That’s where Elliot Levine’s description of the cloak and dagger nature of the work that was involved in making contact with those Jews was so vividly described in the two articles he wrote for us in 1991.
Levine noted that the vast majority of Ethiopian Jews – also known as “Falashas” (which is a derogatory term meaning stranger that was commonly applied to Ethiopian Jews by other Israelis) lived in Gondar province, which is in the north of Ethiopia.
As he wrote in the first of his articles describing the part that some Winnipeg Jews played in that rescue effort (published in the June 5, 1991 issue of The Jewish Post & News), “In April 1990 an agent if the American Association of Ethiopian Jews went into Ethiopia from North America….
“By May 1990 thousands of Ethiopian Jews had arrived in Addis Ababa with the help of a field worker placed by the American agent. A ‘truck stop’ outside of Gondar city was the rendezvous point. A few dollars a head paid for the road transport to the capital.
“By early June, however, an arrest had been made and a message had been sent out not to replace the field agent. Thereafter, those who made their way out of the hills had to make their own arrangements…
“With over 10,000 now in the capital (Addis Ababa), overburdened workers reported the weekly death tolls… By month’s end, emergency meetings and commitments had been made in Israel…
“In Winnipeg meanwhile, our Council of Rabbis was briefed on the situation and their response, among other things, funded an Ethiopian Jewish ‘agent’ we sent from Israel to assist families with particular problems.”

Levine went on to describe the invaluable assistance that agent played in helping Ethiopian Jews through “nighttime meetings, escorted tours that evaded security patrols and interviews with Ethiopian Jewish refugees.”
Levine noted, however, that the effort to help rescue Ethiopian Jews was organized entirely by a group of private individuals – with no assistance whatsoever from what was then the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council (later to become the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg). Further, the Committee for Ethiopian Jews – as the group was known, was an initiative led by members of Temple Shalom, Winnipeg’s Reform congregation.

At this point I want to return to that initial email I received from the Ethiopian Jewish individual who had reached out to me. In very dramatic fashion he described what happened when one father was approached by one of the agents who had been dispatched by the Israeli government to make contact with Ethiopian Jews and try to persuade them to flee their homes in Gondar:

“ ‘The silent call’ Operation Solomon
“ ‘good morning my name is …..i am here to tell you that we are on a mission to send a lot of people from Bet Israel( Ethiopian Jews) to Israel. And we know you are one of them. Are you interested’
“ ‘no I am not a Jew I went through horrible times I do not want to talk about myself and how would I know you are not a spy’
” ‘No I am not a spy please I know your family that is why I came to tell you about this mission’
“ ‘yes I am and please don’t tell anyone I am a Jew’
“This was a conversation that took place with the father of Anna and Jerusalem, 13 and 15 year olds who were sexually assaulted in front of their mother who took her own life the following day.
“That month in March 1991 preparation to evacuate 14000 Ethiopia Jews was planned secretly.
“In that same year 1991 bitter civil was raging in the Western part of Ethiopia, Just a month later the military junta was about to be overthrown.”

To return to Elliot Levine’s account of the role Winnipeg Jews played in the rescue of some Ethiopian Jews, in the follow-up article he wrote about that effort, he noted that Winnipeg Jews often responded quickly when told of specific urgent cases of individuals in need of direct help: “In the months preceding the airlift we had the luxury of responding to emergency appeals quickly….We in Winnipeg had arranged an especially prompt conduit – on most favourable terms. We also functioned as supporters of last resort for some of the inevitable cases that fell between the cracks. Recipients often confirmed receipt of our aid within a few days of our being notified of their plight.”

Ultimately, Operation Solomon helped rescue over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews in just 36 hours – from May 24-25, 1991. Non- stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft were involved, including military and civilian planes. Almost all of Ethiopia’s Jewish population was rescued as a result.

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