Features
Norman Stein – a teacher in the Jewish school system for over 14 years, whose varied interests in music, art, films, and Jewish learning made him a true “Renaissance man”
By BERNIE BELLAN For hundreds of Winnipeg Jews – both current and former, the name Norman Stein conjures up a multitude of memories.
For many of us, “Mr. Stein” was a teacher in the Jewish day school system during the 1950s and 60s who not only taught Hebrew subjects, he was also truly a Renaissance man with an extraordinarily broad knowledge of literature, art, films, and music.
If you were a student at Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate during the 1960s you might have been lucky enough to have taken one of Stein’s classes in art or music appreciation, philosophy or, as he told me during a recent phone interview, library science (for Grade 11 and 12 students).
But, if you didn’t know Stein the teacher, you might have made his acquaintance as a music maven –who was involved both in concert and record producing, along with working for the famed German recording company, Deutsche Grammaphon, as both a director of that company and vice president of its Canadian branch.
It was in the late 1960s, following Stein’s full transition from teacher to businessman with a variety of interests, that many Winnipeggers also met him in his capacity as owner as the very popular music store, Opus 69 – which was first located on top of Clifford’s at Portage and Kennedy, later on Kennedy between Portage and Ellice in what is now part of Air Canada’s Winnipeg headquarters.
Later, Stein left Winnipeg for Vancouver, where he became enmeshed in the music scene there, also opening a shop where he began selling his own vast collection of music recordings.
Not only was Stein’s name associated with Canada’s music scene for years, helping to launch the careers of such artists as Sarah MacLachlan – among others, he was also involved with the film business, both in terms of helping to produce and promote movie sound track albums (such as the 1977 version of “A Star is Born”, starring Barbra Streisand), later as a consultant for the film prop business in Vancouver.
About to turn 89 (in June), Norman Stein has been a resident of the Weinberg Residence at the Louis Brier Centre in Vancouver since that branch of Louis Brier first opened in 2003.
Having remained an observant Jew all his life, Stein has played an integral role in the religious life of Louis Brier ever since he moved there.
When I first contacted Stein, and broached the idea of conducting a phone interview with him, he said that it would have to be at a time when he was fully rested – given his age.
And, although Stein has endured two major health setbacks in his life – once when he was rear ended in his car in Winnipeg and subsequently ended up in a coma as a result of his having been prescribed the wrong medication; a second time when he returned from a trip to Los Angeles and came down with Equine Encephalitis, and he claims that his memory has major gaps as a result of those two conditions, during our hour-long phone conversation, he often recalled with vivid detail his Winnipeg years.
I told Stein that, although his entire life has been rich with so many different facets, for the purposes of the story I wanted to write, I preferred to concentrate on his teaching career in the Jewish school system in Winnipeg – something with which, I said to him, many of our readers would have some acquaintance.
I began by asking Stein about his background, saying to him, “You had a religious upbringing, didn’t you?”
He answered: “That was not unusual for the north end of Winnipeg. I didn’t know any other type. We didn’t have labels like ‘Orthodox’. Most Jews then just observed what our parents observed in Eastern Europe.”
I asked: “What street did you grow up on?”
He responded: “As far as I can remember, it was Pritchard Avenue. Later, we moved further north – to Redwood Avenue. We had three rooms with no hot water and no bathtub – and no heat except for a ‘Quebec stove’ in the kitchen that had pipes going into the three rooms.
“Rent was $14 a month. My father was a peddler and it was amazing to see how he could even raise the $14 to pay the rent.
“We ended up buying a home on St. Anthony. We had to make sure there were Jewish families there because we wanted to live in a Jewish area.”
I asked: “This is when? Around the 1950s?”
Stein answered: “I went to yeshiva (in Chicago, he later noted) around 1948 – the Yom Kippur after the State of Israel was established. It was Hebrew Theological College – or Beis Midrash L’Torah.”
Stein explained that his teacher at what was then the Talmud Torah on Flora and Charles was someone by the name of “Mr. Klein”. (Back when he was attending Talmud Torah – in the 1930s and 40s, Stein explained, students attended a branch of the Talmud Torah on Magnus and Powers for Grades 1 – 3, then the Flora and Charles location for Grades 4 – 7.)
“I didn’t know how good we (Klein’s students) were,” Stein explained, “because when I was given an examination (at yeshiva), I ended up being transferred from the Grade 10 class right into the graduation class – Grade 12, and I did very well.”
As mentioned earlier, Norman Stein loved films and music. He explained that his family used to go to the Ukrainian Labour Temple (which still exists, at the corner of Burrows and McGregor) “on Sundays, to watch movies, acrobatics – they had a dance school, they had a daily paper, in Ukrainian – it was Communist; and we used to watch through the basement window the daily edition of those printing presses.
“Anyway, one Erev Shabbes – I was three or four, I snuck into the theatre and the manager asked me who I was looking for?
“I told him I was looking for my mommy. He said, ‘You just sit here’, and the next thing I know I’m watching the Priscilla Lane sisters playing tennis in their white shorts. I remembered that.
“The manager called me out and said, ‘Your mother’s here now.’ And I wondered, how could that be? because my mother doesn’t even know I’m here. I go out and there’s my mother and Mrs. Rubinfield, who ran a grocery store a few doors down, and had a pay phone – which they avoided using on Shabbes – but they called the police and the police asked, ‘Is there a favourite place he likes to go?’ and my mother said I like to go to the movies, so the police said: Maybe he went to the Labour Temple.’”
As Stein explained what happened next, when he was confronted outside the Labour Temple by his mother, Mrs. Rubinfield, and a “Bobby” who was with them, in addition to being scolded for wandering into the movie theatre, the Bobby added: “And you didn’t even pay”, to which, Stein said he answered (and remember, this is a four-year-old), “Tsur nisht fregn zayn gelt on Shabbes” – “You mustn’t carry any money on Shabbes.”
The conversation took some interesting leaps, but at one point it led to a discussion of the kosher scene in Winnipeg during the 1930s and 40s. Somehow, we ended up talking about kosher restaurants in Winnipeg at that time. According to Stein, there were no kosher restaurants in Winnipeg whatsoeer at that time. I was rather surprised to hear that, so I asked: “What about the YMHA?” (which would have been on Albert Street at that time). Surely the cafeteria there would have been kosher, I suggested.
Stein’s response was “When you lived in the north end in the 40s you didn’t know about the YMHA.” (That proposition would certainly have been open to question, given the information we were able to ascertain about the Albert Street Y and how many north enders did go there when the YMHA held its 100th anniversary reunion in 2019, but let’s leave that aside for the time being. In any event, when Stein added that “the YMHA was really very much a secular place,” he was correct.)
In 1951, following his completion of yeshiva studies, Stein returned to Winnipeg, where he “taught the confirmation class at the Shaarey Zedek”.
The rabbi of Shaarey Zedek at that time was Milton Aaron. “Not once did I meet him the entire year that I taught there,” Stein noted, “although years later he wanted me to do some articles in the Jewish Post about some important people that were VIP’s in his eyes.”
In 1952 Stein began what would end up being a 13-year career teaching at the Rosh Pina Hebrew School. “I ended up being head teacher and head of school,” he said.
“Then I started teaching at the Talmud Torah (on Matheson Avenue) in 1956 and started out at the Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate the very day it opened (in 1959).”
Later in our conversation I asked Stein how he was able to teach at the Rosh Pina, Talmud Torah, and Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate all at the same time?
He explained: “Talmud Torah was Grade 1. I was teaching from nine till noon. After that I went to the Wolinsky Collegiate or I was teaching Grade 3 or Grade 5. After that I would go to the Rosh Pina, where I was teaching from 4:30 till 8. It worked out. My whole day was filled. I didn’t eat my dinner until about 8:30 or 9.”
At that point in the conversation, Stein interjected with a rather shocking segué, noting that, “In 1954 my father was killed by a train.” He went on to describe the grisly details of how that happened, but there’s no need to record them here. Suffice to say that it was a totally preventable tragedy.
Following that somewhat surprising twist in the conversation, I said to Stein that I wanted to change tack and find out more about how he became the “Renaissance man” whose interests in art, music, films, and philosophy were imparted to so many of his students over the years.
“When did you start to develop an appreciation for movies and music?” I asked.
“When I was four years old,” he answered. In addition to the aforementioned Ukrainian Labour Temple, “we went to the Palace Theatre (on Selkirk Avenue), to the “Yiddish Theatre” (in the Queen’s Theatre, also on Selkirk), to the “Dominion Theatre”, for live productions (situated at the corner of Portage and Main where the Richardson Building now stands).
As for his exposure to music, Stein had a good singing voice. In material I received from the Louis Brier Residence that had been assembled to spotlight resident Norman Stein, it was noted that “I was selected for the cantorial class by the famous Benjamin Brownstone, but took a back seat to the likes of baritone Norman Mittleman, whose career led to the San Francisco Opera.”
I wondered about Stein’s love of art – and when that developed?
It came “mostly from a secular teacher in Aberdeen School,” he explained. “I learned art technique.”
I said to Stein that I’ve always remembered a fabulous course he taught our Grade 8 class at Joseph Wolinsky on art appreciation. “You taught us the rudiments of architecture,” I recalled.
“We had to photograph Winnipeg buildings and find examples of European buildings that had the same architectural styles,” I said, such as “Gothic and Roman”.
“I taught different courses to students in Grades 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12,” Stein said.
“In Grade 7 it was music, Grade 8 was art and art history, Grade 9 I don’t remember…there was philosophy, and 11 and 12 was library science.”
In that course Stein taught students “how to use microfilms, how to do footnotes, how to prepare a proper bibliography”, on top of which they had to write papers that were about 100 pages. Remember, these were mostly handwritten.”
(In a post on the “Jewish students of the 50s and 60s” Facebook page, former Stein student Avrum Rosner reproduced the actual comments Stein had made about a paper Rosner had written about famed philosopher Bertrand Russell when Rosner was only 14. Stein’s comments extended over a page in length. Just look at the level of erudition he used in commenting on Rosner’s paper – something rather exceptional for a teacher teaching 14-year-olds. Those comments can be seen in a sidebar article accompanying this article in which former Stein students comment about their experience of him as their teacher.)
So, Stein had a very full career until 1966. “I even wrote a column for the Jewish Post,” he added.
“And then I ended up getting rear ended by a truck,” Stein said. “That’s a period I don’t remember well… I was in a coma for some time. I was a nervous wreck. My doctor suggested I go to some place relaxing, so I went to Hollywood.”
Thus began the next chapter of Norman Stein’s life, including the opening of what became Winnipeg’s most popular record store for a time, Opus 69.
In a future issue we’ll resume writing about Norman Stein and his eclectic career.
Features
Rob Reiner asked the big questions. His death leaves us searching for answers.
Can men and women just be friends? Can you be in the revenge business too long? Why don’t you just make 10 louder and have that be the top number on your amp?
All are questions Rob Reiner sought to answer. In the wake of his and his wife’s unexpected deaths, which are being investigated as homicides, it’s hard not to reel with questions of our own: How could someone so beloved come to such a senseless end? How can we account for such a staggering loss to the culture when it came so prematurely? How can we juggle that grief and our horror over the violent murder of Jews at an Australian beach, gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, and still light candles of our own?
The act of asking may be a way forward, just as Rob Reiner first emerged from sitcom stardom by making inquiries.
In This is Spinal Tap, his first feature, he played the role of Marty DiBergi, the in-universe director of the documentary about the misbegotten 1982 U.S. concert tour of the eponymous metal band. He was, in a sense, culminating the work of his father, Carl Reiner, who launched a classic comedy record as the interviewer of Mel Brooks’ 2,000 Year Old Man. DiBergi as played by Reiner was a reverential interlocutor — one might say a fanboy — but he did take time to query Nigel Tufnell as to why his amp went to 11. And, quoting a bad review, he asked “What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?”
But Reiner had larger questions to mull over. And in this capacity — not just his iconic scene at Katz’s Deli in When Harry Met Sally or the goblin Yiddishkeit of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride — he was a fundamentally Jewish director.
Stand By Me is a poignant meditation on death through the eyes of childhood — it asks what we remember and how those early experiences shape us. The Princess Bride is a storybook consideration of love — it wonders at the price of seeking or avenging it at all costs. A Few Good Men is a trenchant, cynical-for-Aaron Sorkin, inquest of abuse in the military — how can it happen in an atmosphere of discipline.
In his public life, Reiner was an activist. He asked how he could end cigarette smoking. He asked why gay couples couldn’t marry like straight ones. He asked what Russia may have had on President Trump. This fall, with the FCC’s crackdown on Jimmy Kimmel, he asked if he would soon be censored. He led with the Jewish question of how the world might be repaired.
Guttingly, in perhaps his most personal project, 2015’s Being Charlie, co-written by his son Nick he wondered how a parent can help a child struggling with addiction. (Nick was questioned by the LAPD concerning his parents’ deaths and was placed under arrest.)
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None of the questions had pat answers. Taken together, there’s scarcely a part of life that Reiner’s filmography overlooked, including the best way to end it, in 2007’s The Bucket List.
Judging by the longevity of his parents, both of whom lived into their 90s, it’s entirely possible Reiner had much more to ask of the world. That we won’t get to see another film by him, or spot him on the news weighing in on the latest democratic aberration, is hard to swallow.
Yet there is some small comfort in the note Reiner went out on. In October, he unveiled Spinal Tap II: The Beginning of the End, a valedictory moment in a long and celebrated career.
Reiner once again returned to the role of DiBergi. I saw a special prescreening with a live Q&A after the film. It was the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I half-expected Reiner to break character and address political violence — his previous film, God & Country, was a documentary on Christian Nationalism.
But Reiner never showed up — only Marty DiBergi, sitting with Nigel Tuffnell (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. The interview was broadcast to theaters across the country, with viewer-submitted questions like “What, in fact, did the glove from Smell the Glove smell like?” (Minty.) And “Who was the inspiration for ‘Big Bottom?’” (Della Reese.)
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DiBergi had one question for the audience: “How did you feel about the film?”
The applause was rapturous, but DiBergi still couldn’t get over Nigel Tuffnell’s Marshall amp, which now stretched beyond 11 and into infinity.
“How can that be?” he asked. “How can you go to infinity? How loud is that?”
There’s no limit, Tuffnell assured him. “Why should there be a limit?”
Reiner, an artist of boundless curiosity and humanity, was limitless. His remit was to reason why. He’ll be impossible to replace, but in asking difficult questions, we can honor him.
The post Rob Reiner asked the big questions. His death leaves us searching for answers. appeared first on The Forward.
Features
A People and a Pulse: Jewish Voices in Jazz and Modern Music
By MARTIN ZEILIG Jazz history is usually told through its most iconic names — Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis — yet running alongside that familiar story is another, often under‑acknowledged one: the deep and enduring contribution of Jewish musicians, bandleaders, composers, and cultural intermediaries.
From the moment jazz emerged at the turn of the 20th century, Jews were not simply observers but active shapers of the music and the industry around it. Their influence — artistic, entrepreneurial, and cultural — has been both significant and, in many respects, disproportionately large. Jews and Jazz (171 pg. $18.75 US) a self‑published work by Laurence Seeff, brings this parallel narrative into sharp, affectionate focus.
Seeff is an ideal guide.
Born in London in 1951, he built a career that moved from statistics to energy policy in Paris, from financial markets at Bloomberg to corporate training in the City of London, all while writing poetry, songs, and humorous verse. Today he lives in Israel, where he continues to write, perform, learn Ivrit, and enjoy life with his large family. Through all these chapters runs a constant passion for jazz — a passion sparked more than fifty‑five years ago when he first heard Terry Lightfoot’s Jazzmen in a Bournemouth pub.
His writing blends clarity, humour, and genuine love for the music and the people who made it.
The musicians he profiles often came from immigrant families who brought with them the musical DNA of Eastern Europe — the cadences of synagogue chant, the urgency of klezmer, the cultural instinct for learning and artistic expression. When these sensibilities met the African American genius of early jazz, the result was a remarkable creative fusion.
Some figures, like Chico Marx, are better known for comedy than musicianship, yet Seeff reminds us that Chico was a serious pianist whose jazz‑inflected playing appeared in every Marx Brothers film and whose orchestra launched young talents like Mel Tormé. Others — Abe Lyman, Lew Stone, and Oscar Rabin — shaped the dance‑band era on both sides of the Atlantic.
Canadian readers will be pleased to find Morris “Moe” Koffman included as well: the Toronto‑born flautist and saxophonist whose “Swinging Shepherd Blues” became an international hit and whose long career at the CBC helped define Canadian jazz.
Seeff also highlights artists whose connection to jazz is more tangential but culturally revealing. Barbra Streisand, for example — a classmate and choir‑mate of Neil Diamond at Erasmus Hall High School — was never a natural jazz singer, yet her versatility allowed her to step into the idiom when she chose.
She opened for Miles Davis at the Village Vanguard in 1961 and, nearly half a century later, returned to the same club to promote Love Is the Answer, her collaboration with jazz pianist Diana Krall. Her contribution to jazz may be limited, but her stature as one of the greatest singers of all time is unquestioned.
Neil Diamond, too, appears in these pages.
Though not a jazz artist, he starred — with gusto, if not great acting finesse — in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, 53 years after Al Jolson’s original. The film was not a success, nor was it truly a jazz picture, but its title and its star’s Jewish identity make it part of the cultural tapestry Seeff explores.
Diamond and Streisand recorded together only once, in 1978, on “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” a reminder of the long‑standing artistic ties between them.
Mel Tormé, by contrast, was deeply rooted in jazz. Nicknamed “The Velvet Fog,” he was a prodigy who sang professionally at age four, wrote his first hit at sixteen, drummed for Chico Marx, and recorded with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. Ethel Waters once said he was “the only white man who sings with the soul of a black man.” His story exemplifies the porous, collaborative nature of jazz.
Seeff also includes non‑Jewish figures whose lives intersected meaningfully with Jewish culture. Frank Sinatra — perhaps the greatest crooner of them all — was a steadfast supporter of Jewish causes, from protesting during the Holocaust to raising funds for Israel Bonds and the Hebrew University. His multiple visits to Israel, including a major concert in Jerusalem in 1975, underscore the depth of his connection.
Danny Kaye earns his place through his close work with Louis Armstrong, his pitch‑perfect scat singing, and his starring role in The Five Pennies, the biopic of jazz cornetist Red Nichols. Though not a jazz musician per se, his performances radiated a genuine feel for the music.
A later generation is represented by Harry Connick Jr., whose Jewish mother and New Orleans upbringing placed him at the crossroads of cultures. A prodigy who played publicly at age five, he went on to become one of the most successful jazz‑influenced vocalists of his era, with ten number‑one jazz albums.
Even Bob Dylan appears in Seeff’s mosaic — another reminder that Jewish creativity has touched every corner of modern music, sometimes directly through jazz, sometimes through the broader cultural currents that surround it.
Taken together, the concise portraits in Jews and Jazz form a lively, engaging mosaic — a celebration of creativity, resilience, and cross‑cultural exchange. They show how Jewish musicians helped carry jazz from vaudeville and dance halls into swing, bebop, cool jazz, pop, rock, and film music.
They remind us that jazz, at its heart, is a meeting place: a space where people of different backgrounds listen to one another, learn from one another, and create something larger than themselves.
For further information, contact the author at the following email address: laurenceseeff@yahoo.co.uk
Features
Jews in Strange Places
By DAVID TOPPER The Jewish contribution to 20th century popular music is well known. From Jerome Kern through to Stephen Sondheim, Jews played major roles as both composers and lyricists in the so-called Great American Songbook. (An exception is Cole Porter.) It continued in Musical Theatre throughout the rest of the century.
One very small piece of this story involves what Time magazine in the December 1999 issue called “the tune of the century.” First recorded sixty years before that, it is the powerful and haunting tune called “Strange Fruit,” which is about the lynching of black people in the southern USA. First sung by Billie Holiday in 1939, it became her signature tune.
So, why do I bring this up? Because there is a multi-layered Jewish connection to this song that is worth recalling, which may not be known to many readers.
Let’s start with the lyrics to “Strange Fruit,” which are the essence of this powerful piece:
Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Before becoming lyrics in a song, this poem stood alone as a potent statement about the lynchings still taking place throughout the American South at the time. The strong metaphorical imagery never explicitly mentions the lynching, which adds to the poetic power of this poem. Standing alone, I believe it’s an important protest verse from the 20th century.
Searching it on the internet, you may find the author listed as Lewis Allan. But that’s not his real name. “Lewis Allen” is the often-used pen name of Abel Meeropol, a Jewish High School teacher from the Bronx in New York. He and his wife, Anne (nee Shaffer), had two stillborn children with those names – a fact that adds a poignant element to this story.
The origin of the poem for Abel was a photograph he had seen of a lynching of black men in the South. I have seen such images, possibly even the one Abel saw: for example, a sepia photograph of two black men hanging from a long tree limb, and a large crowd of white people below (men, women and even children!), most seeming dressed in their Sunday best (some men with straw hats) looking up and gawking at the sight, some with smiles on their faces – as if attending a festive spectacle. Like Abel, I felt repelled by the picture: it turned my stomach. This communal display of horrific cruelty gave me a glimpse into Abel’s mind, and I understood how it compelled him to write about it. He thus wrote the poem, and it was published in a teacher’s magazine in 1937.
Being a songwriter too, in 1938 Abel added a melody and played it in a New York club he often attended. But here’s where this story’s documentation gets contradictory, depending upon who is recalling the events. The club owner knew Billie Holiday, and he showed the song to her. What her initial response was, we cannot know for sure. But we do know that in a relatively short time, she added it to her repertoire. It eventually became her signature tune. She initially sang it in public, but because of its popularity among her fans, there was pressure to record it too.
There were initial rejections from recording companies because of the controversial content. But Commodore Records took a chance and pressed the first recording in April 1939. This was the same year the movie “Gone with the Wind” came out; it was steeped in racial stereotyping. It was also sixteen years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
As a record, the song obviously reached a large audience. Since the content was about racism, the song was seen as politically radical; not surprisingly, many radio stations banned it from the airwaves.
Furthermore, it’s also not surprising that Abel, a schoolteacher, was called to appear before a committee of New York lawmakers who were looking for communists in the schools. Possibly they were surprised to find that the poem and the song were written by a white man – and a Jew to boot. In particular, they wanted to know if he was paid by the Communist Party to write this song. He was not. And, in the end, they let him go. But shortly thereafter he quit his teaching job.
This took place in 1941 and was a precursor to the continued American obsession with communism into the 1950s, under Senator Joe McCarthy.
Indeed, that episode had an impact on Abel and Anne too. In 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of giving information about nuclear science to the Soviet Union, and they were the first married couple to be executed in the electric chair. They left two sons, Michael (age 10) and Robert (age 6). Apparently, immediate family members were reticent to get involved with the boys, possibly afraid of being accused of sympathizing with communism.
Enter Abel and Anne. Without a moment’s hesitation they stepped in, taking and raising the boys. As Michael and Robert Meeropol they eventually went on to become college professors – and naturally were active in social issues. Anne died in 1973. Abel died in 1986 in a Jewish nursing home in Massachusetts, after a slow decline into dementia. Long before that, Billie Holiday died in 1959, ravaged by the drug addition that took her life at forty-four years of age.
See why I called this a multi-layered Jewish story that’s worth telling?
To hear Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” click here: Strange Fruit