(Ed. note: If you haven’t read Part 1 of “The Red Inheritance,” you can find it here: The Red Inheritance.)

By H.C. Piloski
FOREWORD
The Wider Circle
What follows is not a continuation so much as an expansion. The first part traced a single thread — a granddaughter’s attempt to understand the man whose life shaped her own. But every thread, once pulled, reveals others. And every inheritance, once examined, widens into a circle.

This second part enters that wider circle.
It begins with a photograph discovered only after the first part was finished: a small, creased image of a protest on Carlton Street in June 1953. In the blur of bodies stands a young man — Rachel’s grandfather — raising his hand in defense of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two American Jews condemned in a trial that divided a continent. That photograph opened a door Rachel had not known existed.
It revealed that her grandfather’s world was not confined to Winnipeg’s North End, nor to the furnace rooms and union halls where he spent his working life. His convictions reached outward — to New York, to Europe, to Israel and Palestine, to the global struggles of the twentieth century.
This part follows those convictions.
It traces his years in the CPR union, where he learned solidarity not as a slogan but as a practice. It follows his activism within the Jewish left — activism that began long before his retirement, rooted in the political commitments he carried through the railway yards, the union halls, and the neighbourhood streets of the North End. It examines his belief in Israel’s creation and his unwavering insistence on Palestinian rights. It explores his commitment to nuclear disarmament, his distrust of state power, his hope for a world that might yet choose justice over fear.
It also follows the path of his son — Rachel’s father — who walked beside him for a time before turning away, carrying both admiration and ambivalence. And it follows Rachel herself, as she moves from personal memory into historical inquiry, discovering that her grandfather’s life was part of a larger, often contradictory, often painful, always human story.
This part is not an attempt to sanctify him. It is an attempt to understand him — and the century he lived in.
The shadows are real. The contradictions are real. The hope is real.
This story is one thread in a larger tapestry of inherited memory and consequence. And the circle continues to widen.

PROLOGUE
Rachel had always believed her grandfather’s world ended at the corner of Selkirk and Salter — the bakery, the union hall, the old brick houses of the North End. It was a geography of memory, not history. A place where men argued about wages and women argued about recipes, where politics was spoken in kitchens and carried in pockets, folded like prayer.
But after he died, and after she finished the part she thought would be the end of it, she found the photograph.
It was small, creased, almost brittle. Her father had tucked it into a folder he hadn’t opened in years. On the back, in her grandfather’s handwriting, were the words: Carlton Street, June 1953.
On the front: a crowd of men and women standing outside the old Winnipeg Free Press building. Some held signs. Some shouted. Some looked frightened. And there, almost lost in the blur of bodies, was her zaida — younger than she had ever seen him, his hair black, his jaw set, his hand raised in a gesture that was not anger but insistence.
She didn’t know what the protest was about until she looked up the date.
The Rosenberg execution.

Her grandfather had stood on Carlton Street, in Winnipeg, protesting the death of two American Jews accused of betraying their country. He had stood there as though the fate of strangers thousands of miles away was somehow his own.
That was the moment Rachel understood: Her grandfather’s world had never been small. It had only been local.
The circle was wider — far wider — than she had ever imagined.
And if she wanted to understand him, truly understand him, she would have to follow that circle outward: from Winnipeg to New York, from union halls to espionage files, from the Holocaust’s shadow to the contradictions of Israel and Palestine, from Cold War paranoia to the fragile hope of peace.
She would have to learn why a man who loved his family so fiercely also believed he owed something to the world.
She would have to learn why her father followed him for a time, and why he stopped.
She would have to learn what it meant to inherit not only memory, but conviction.
Rachel closed the folder. She packed a suitcase. She booked a flight.
The wider circle had opened. She stepped into it.

THE UNION MAN
The first thing Rachel noticed about the CPR archives was the smell — dust, paper, and the faint metallic tang of old machinery, as though the building itself remembered the trains that once thundered past it. She had come here reluctantly, almost skeptically. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find. Her grandfather had worked for the railway for decades, but she had always thought of it as a job, not a calling.
She was wrong.
The archivist, a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses, handed her a stack of union newsletters from the 1950s and 60s. “Your grandfather’s name appears quite a bit,” he said, almost casually. “He wasn’t just a member. He was active.”
Active. The word felt too small.
She flipped through the pages. There he was — David Levinson — listed as a shop steward, then as a delegate, then as a representative on a labour committee that had petitioned the CPR for safer working conditions. She found minutes from meetings where he had argued for wage parity, for antidiscrimination clauses, for the hiring of more immigrant workers. She found a letter he had written to the union president, urging solidarity with striking textile workers in Montreal.
She found, tucked between two newsletters, a faded photograph of him standing outside the CPR yards, his arm around a fellow worker, both of them smiling in a way that suggested victory, or at least defiance.
Her grandfather had not been a man who simply held opinions. He had been a man who acted.
But what struck her most was not the union work itself — it was how deeply it intertwined with the politics she had only begun to understand. In the margins of one newsletter, in her grandfather’s unmistakable handwriting, she found a note:
Solidarity is the only weapon the poor have.
It wasn’t a slogan. It was a belief.
And suddenly, she understood something she had missed entirely: her grandfather’s political life had not begun after retirement. It had begun here — in the yards, in the meetings, in the long nights spent drafting resolutions and writing letters. His involvement in the Jewish left, his membership in the Communist Party, his activism for peace and justice — all of it had grown from the soil of the railway.
He had carried his convictions with him to work every day, tucked into his lunch pail alongside sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. He had argued politics during breaks, organized meetings after shifts, and spent weekends in smoky rooms debating the future of workers, of Jews, of the world.
Rachel felt a strange mixture of pride and unease. Pride, because she could see the beginnings of the man she had written about in the first part — the stubbornness, the moral clarity, the refusal to accept injustice as inevitable. Unease, because she realized how little she had understood him.
She had written about his politics, but not their roots. She had written about his convictions, but not their labour. She had written about his life, but not his work.
Her father had tried to tell her, once. He had said, “Your zaida wasn’t just a leftist. He was a union man. That’s where it all started.” She had nodded, distracted, thinking she already knew.
She hadn’t known anything.
She turned another page and found a brief report from a meeting of the Jewish left organization — dated 1961. Her grandfather had spoken about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, about the moral responsibility of workers to oppose war, about the need for solidarity across borders. He had been involved long before retirement. He had been involved while raising a family, while working shifts, while navigating the Cold War’s suspicion and fear.
He had lived his politics openly, stubbornly, deliberately.
Rachel closed the newsletter and sat back.
The wider circle was not only global. It was personal.

CARLTON STREET, 1953
Rachel didn’t intend to go to Carlton Street. She had only meant to walk, to clear her head after the shock of seeing her grandfather in that photograph. But her feet carried her there anyway, as though the city itself remembered what she had forgotten.
The former Winnipeg Free Press building — the Old Lady of Carlton Street — was still there, though it no longer housed reporters or printing presses. Its stone façade, once the backdrop to arguments, deadlines, and the hum of a city’s news, now sheltered provincial civil servants shuffling between offices, fluorescent lights, and government memos. Rachel stood on the sidewalk where her grandfather had once stood, where he had raised his hand in protest on a June afternoon in 1953, demanding justice for two American Jews he had never met. The building had changed purpose, but not presence. It watched her with the same quiet solidity it must have offered him, as though it remembered everything.
She tried to imagine the scene: the crowd, the signs, the tension, the fear. The way people must have looked over their shoulders, worried about being photographed, named, watched — but her grandfather and the few other protesters looked up, not down, toward the illuminated news bulletin above the entrance.
She tried to picture him — young, determined, stubborn — standing there with the conviction that what happened in New York mattered in Winnipeg, that injustice anywhere was a threat everywhere, that solidarity was not a slogan but a responsibility. She imagined him arriving after a shift at the CPR yards, still smelling faintly of grease and metal, carrying the political commitments he had already been living for years: union solidarity, Jewish left activism, Communist meetings held in borrowed basements and back rooms. Carlton Street had not been an exception. It had been an extension of the life he was already leading.
She wondered if her father had been there too, a boy holding his father’s hand, not understanding the words but understanding the urgency.
She wondered why no one had told her.
She wondered what else she didn’t know.
A bus hissed to a stop beside her. A group of teenagers spilled out, laughing, unaware of the ghosts beneath their feet. Rachel felt a sudden, sharp ache — not grief, exactly, but recognition. Her grandfather had lived in a world where politics were not abstractions but obligations. He had believed that the fate of strangers mattered. He had believed that justice was not a matter of geography.
She took out the photograph again. She held it up to the building. The past and present did not align, but the gesture felt necessary.
Her phone buzzed. A message from her father: “Call me when you can. I found something else you should see.”
She stared at the screen. Her father had always been careful with his words, careful with his memories, careful with the parts of his life that touched his father’s politics. He had followed his father for a time — marches, meetings, pamphlets — before turning away, quietly, without explanation.
Rachel lowered the photograph, walked back to where she had parked, unlocked the car, and slid into the driver’s seat. She started the engine and pulled away from Carlton Street, heading north through the familiar grid of the city, toward her father’s house.
The wider circle was widening again. And she was being pulled into it.

THE FATHER’S BOX
Her father lived in the same house Rachel had grown up in, though it felt smaller now, as though the walls had absorbed decades of arguments, silences, and the quiet persistence of memory. He met her at the door with a look she couldn’t quite read — not worry, not excitement, but something like resignation. From the back room Rachel could hear her mother speaking softly to someone.
“I found more,” he said. He didn’t hug her. He never did. But he stepped aside to let her in, which was its own kind of embrace.
The dining room table was covered with papers. Not scattered — arranged. Her father had always been meticulous, even when the rest of his life felt chaotic. Rachel saw folders, envelopes, a few brittle photographs, and a cardboard box she recognized instantly.
Her grandfather’s box.
It had sat in the basement for years, untouched, because her father had insisted it was “just old papers.” Rachel had believed him. She had believed a lot of things he said about her grandfather, because he said them with the authority of someone who had lived through the same storms.
Now she wasn’t sure what he had lived through, or what he had chosen to forget.
Her father gestured to the box. “I didn’t want to open it before,” he said. “I wasn’t ready.”
Rachel sat down. “What changed?”
He hesitated. “You did.”
She didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t ask. She reached for the box. The cardboard was soft with age, the edges worn. She lifted the lid.
Inside were papers from the Jewish left organization her grandfather had devoted himself to — not only after retirement, but long before it. Meeting minutes. Pamphlets. Letters. A stack of mimeographed newsletters with headlines about peace, justice, workers’ rights, and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. She saw dates from the 1950s, the 60s, the 70s — decades of activism layered like sediment.
And then she saw it — a folder labeled Holocaust Education Committee.
Her breath caught.
She opened it carefully. Inside were copies of speeches her grandfather had given before the Winnipeg School Board, urging them to include Holocaust education in the curriculum. There were letters he had written to the Minister of Education, arguing that genocide was not a Jewish tragedy but a human one, and that children needed to understand how hatred becomes policy.
There were notes in his handwriting — fierce, urgent, uncompromising:
Memory is not passive. Memory is protection. Teach them before someone else teaches them to hate.
Rachel felt her throat tighten.
Her father watched her quietly. “He believed in that work,” he said. “More than anything.”
She looked up. “You never told me.”
He exhaled, long and slow. “I didn’t think you wanted to know. You were always… focused on the personal. The family stories. The furnace. The neighbourhood. I didn’t think you cared about the politics.”
“I care now,” she said.
He nodded, but his expression shifted — something darker, something unresolved.
“There’s more,” he said. “About me.”
Rachel waited.
Her father sat down across from her, folding his hands as though preparing for confession.
“I followed him,” he said. “For a while. The meetings. The marches. The Rosenberg protest — I was there. I was a kid, but I remember the shouting, the fear. I remember him telling me that justice mattered even when it was dangerous.”
Rachel felt a jolt — not shock, but recognition. She had always sensed there was something her father wasn’t saying.
“But I couldn’t stay,” he said. “Not like he did. I didn’t have his… certainty. His stubbornness. His faith in people. I admired him, but I couldn’t be him.”
Rachel didn’t speak. She let him continue.
“He never blamed me,” her father said. “But I blamed myself. For a long time.”
Rachel reached across the table and touched his hand. It was the first time she had done that in years.
Her father swallowed hard. “There’s something else,” he said. “Something you need to see.”
He stood, walked to the hallway, and returned with a thin envelope. He placed it in front of her.
Rachel opened it.
Inside was an RCMP surveillance report. Her father’s name was on it.
She felt the room tilt.
“They questioned me once,” he said quietly. “About meetings I’d gone to with him. They wanted to know who he talked to. Who he met with. I never told you. I never told anyone.”
Rachel looked at him — really looked at him — and saw the weight he had carried, the fear he had inherited, the silence he had chosen.
Her grandfather had lived his politics openly. Her father had lived them in the shadows.
And she — she had lived them unknowingly.
The circle widened again.
Rachel closed the envelope. She didn’t know what to say. But she knew what she had to do.

THE EDUCATION FILES
Rachel carried the box home like something fragile, though it wasn’t the cardboard she was protecting — it was the weight inside it. She set it on her kitchen table, cleared a space around it, and opened it again, this time slowly, deliberately, as though she were entering a room she had been warned about.
The Holocaust Education Committee folder lay on top. She lifted it out and spread the contents across the table. The papers were yellowed, but the ink was still sharp, still insistent. Her grandfather’s handwriting — angular, impatient, unmistakably his — ran along the margins of typed documents like commentary from a man who could never leave a thought alone.
She read the first speech.
It was addressed to the Winnipeg School Board, dated 1978. Her grandfather argued that Holocaust education was not simply about history, but about vigilance. He wrote that genocide begins with language, with silence, with the normalization of cruelty. He wrote that children needed to understand how ordinary people become complicit, how bureaucracies become weapons, how prejudice becomes policy.
He wrote:
If we do not teach them what happened, someone else will teach them why it should happen again.
Rachel felt a chill. She had known her grandfather was passionate about justice, but she had not known he had stood before the school board, before elected officials, before committees, insisting that memory was a civic duty.
She turned to the next document — a letter to the Minister of Education. Her grandfather wrote about survivors in Winnipeg who had never been asked to speak, whose stories were fading, whose trauma had been carried quietly through decades of Canadian politeness. He argued that the province had a responsibility to give those stories a place in classrooms, not as Jewish history, but as human warning.
Rachel imagined him writing these letters late at night, after work, after dinner, after everyone else had gone to bed. She imagined him sitting at the kitchen table — the same table where she had once eaten soup and listened to him tell stories about the neighbourhood — never knowing the depth of the battles he fought outside it.
She picked up another sheet — minutes from a meeting of the Jewish left organization. Her grandfather had spoken about the rise of neoNazi groups in Canada, about the danger of complacency, about the need for education as prevention. His words were blunt, unadorned, almost harsh:
We cannot rely on governments to remember. We must force them to.
Rachel sat back, overwhelmed.
This was not the gentle man who had fixed her bicycle, who had slipped her coins for candy, who had told her stories about growing up in the old North End. This was a man who had carried the Holocaust not as memory but as mandate. A man who believed that justice required confrontation. A man who refused to let silence do its work. A man who had fought fascism all his life — including as a Canadian soldier overseas during the Second World War.
She reached for another document — a list of schools where he had spoken. West Kildonan. Elmwood. St. James. River Heights. Transcona. Schools across the city, across neighbourhoods that had never known him, never known his history, never known the weight he carried.
She wondered how many students remembered him. She wondered what he had said. She wondered if any of them had gone home that day and asked their parents questions that had never been asked before.
Her phone buzzed. A message from her father:
Did you find the education files?
She typed back: Yes.
A moment later: He was proud of that work. He didn’t say it, but he was.
Rachel stared at the screen. Her father had inherited the silence, not the certainty. She had inherited the questions.
She looked again at the papers on the table. Her grandfather’s voice seemed to rise from them — urgent, insistent, unyielding.
This was not a man who had lived quietly. This was a man who had lived deliberately.
And she was only beginning to understand him.
Rachel gathered the papers, placed them back in the folder, and closed the box. She knew what she had to do next.
She needed to see the archives. She needed to see the records. She needed to see the world he had fought against — and the world he had fought for.
The circle widened again.
And she followed it.
Closing Note
Rachel sat at her kitchen table long after the papers were back in the box. The city outside moved on, unaware of the man whose life she had just unfolded — a life lived in conviction, in struggle, in stubborn hope.
She understood now that her grandfather’s politics had not been theory but duty, carried through union halls, marches, classrooms, and quiet nights at the kitchen table. She understood that her father had lived in the shadow of that certainty, and that she herself had inherited something different — the responsibility to listen.
She touched the photograph from Carlton Street, the crease worn soft by time. Her grandfather’s raised hand seemed less like protest now and more like insistence: Pay attention. Remember. Act.
She closed the box gently.
And now, she realized, she was listening too.
H.C. Piloski is the one who listens when the past begins to speak again.

(Posted Sept. 28) Caution.  Caution.  A very long muse ahead….
 
So Prime Minister Netanyahu made his fifteenth address at the United Nations General Assembly.  I get excited with every speech.  Preparing some lightly buttered popcorn and comfortably settling in front of the T.V. for some high-stakes geopolitical posturing.  And this one didn’t miss the mark and the high bar Netanyahu sets for himself.
 
Liked when he referred to our ‘friends’ leaving the hall before he spoke.  Asking.  And smirking.  At the beginning of his speech.  If there are any other “moral cowards” who would like to leave.  He could have said much worse. 
 
Liked his strong defense against the acrimonious, hostile, and simply incorrect accusation of genocide.  Insisting, with examples, of Israel being guilty of the opposite.  Supplying a million polio vaccinations.  Distributing two million tons of food.  Providing warnings of pending attacks -leaflets, cellphone calls, ‘knocks on the roof’ (an IDF tactic of firing non-lethal projectiles towards roof tops as warning to noncombatants to evacuate before a pending airstrike)- in civilian areas where Hamas is inevitably hiding.  Netanyahu also referenced Colonel John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare studies at West Point and the preeminent expert on, well, urban warfare.   Who clearly defends Israel as having done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any other military in history.  That’s quite a claim!  So yes.  Israel can actually be guilty of ediconeg – the opposite of genocide.
 
Didn’t like Netanyahu’s Ben-Gviresque defense of violent West Bank settlers.  Or is it  Judea & Samaria.  I admittedly struggle in geographically defining the area, I digress.  And didn’t like him referring to these settlers as “juvenile delinquents”.  They are much more than that!  If not terrorists, they should at least be called -and treated- as violent criminals.  I admittedly struggle with finding the appropriate label, again digressing.  Overall, this struck me as pandering to his far-right electorate.  Standing before the green marble wall of the UN podium…hmmm, not the most appropriate venue for local electioneering.   
 
Didn’t like his beeper reference.  While brilliant, the pager attack in Lebanon happened in Sept 2024.  Was so taken aback by this reference that I fact checked the date between mouthfuls of popcorn.  And Israel already took credit for this publicly and at several international forums.  Just seemed a bit dated, forced and out of place. 
 
Liked the swipe at our ‘friend’ Mamdani.  On the podium of the U.N. in N.Y.   No less!
 
Liked his call for Jews around the world to stand tall.  “Raise your head high.  Be proud.  Be confident.  Don’t be intimidated.”  He admonished.  Okay, confession time.  I will not speak Hebrew with the wife when travelling overseas.  Am a bit scared and maybe need to stand a bit taller.  I digress.
 
Liked Netanyahu’s callout to the Iranian people.  Declaring that “The power of the people will overcome the people in power.”  Although he didn’t have to provide a public service announcement for Elon Musk’s Starlink, waving a Starlink device at the podium. 
 
Didn’t like, as pointed out by the Jerusalem Post, that there was no complementary vision to his fiery, hardline and somewhat Sparta-like rhetoric.  No mention of a more conciliatory, Athenia-like vision for the day after.  Emphasizing Israel’s desire for peace and what it can and has offered the world.   
 
Loved the overall theme.  That Israel will survive.  And thrive.  Because, as he exclaimed several times, “We have no other choice!”  This was based on a reference in his address to his older brother Yonathan Netanayhu who led the rescue at Entebbe in 1976 and was the only Israeli casualty.  Netanyahu even thanked the Uganda government for recently erecting a statue dedicated to his brother.  Thought this a nice, personal touch.
 
Loved Netanyahu’s passion.  His fiery indignation echoing throughout his almost forty-minute speech.  His fury at the goldarn outrageous, bigoted, noxious branding of Israel as ‘bad’ by much of the world’s useful idiots.  Although should have channeled some of that ire to a more conciliatory day after vision.
 
Anyway.  As for the United Nations.  That bastion of partiality and moral cowardice.  Think it should be renamed the United Naars.  Again I digress.  

(Posted Sept. 25) Looping back to an August 9 muse about my visit to Jerusalem’s Basimta Café and its dispute with the neighborhood ultra-orthodox for opening on Shabbat.  Which I felt was a bit of a storm in a teacup as there wasn’t much protest action when I visited.  But kerfuffles nonetheless.  Unfortunately the café decided against remaining open on Shabbat.  According to the café manager “…it will return to what it was intended to be: a calm, pleasant and open place for coffee, culture and dialogue.”   As it turns out, the manager is also CEO of Jews for Jesus.  Which is fine by me.  Live and let live.  But just wondering if this was also reason for the café brouhaha.  As there are many other Jerusalem cafes open on Shabbat which the ultra-orthodox do not protest against.  Not that I want to give anyone ideas.  Just sayin’.

(Ed. note: Just to put Bruce’s latest musing in context, here again is what he wrote on August 9): August 8, 2026)

Outside Basimta Café in Central Jerusalem.  Love the red shirt against a tiny sea of black.  Not sure I am shrugging because of the ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat or the lack of an ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat.  For the last six weeks Israeli headlines shouted about the cafe chaos.  With the ultra-religious blocking entrances and storming the café.  While shouting ‘Shabbos!  Shabbos!’   Upsetting the secular amongst us just wanting to enjoy our Saturday iced matchas.  So the wife and I thought we would check it out.  And.  Yes.  Buy something to support the business.  Uproar.  Not.  Blocked entrances.  Not.  Storming the café.  Not.  Albeit there were police barriers separating the devout protesters from the coffee drinkers.  The protesters being just a few dozen black clad, pious Jews.  Mostly teenagers.   And yes.  Shouting ‘Shabbos!  Shabbos!’  Certainly underwhelming in its reported mayhem.  Reminds me of the famous saying misattributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed.  If you do, you’re misinformed.”  But I did enjoy my iced matcha.

(Posted Sept. 22) Admire him or despise him. Love him or hate him. Commend him or vilify him. Praise him or criticize him. Respect him or disdain him. Believe him or doubt him. Vote for him or not. However you perceive him. And whether you support him. Wishing Prime Minister Netanyahu a successful visit to New York and the U.N. And that we won’t have to send him a cake with a hacksaw baked inside. Mamdani… stand down!

(Posted Sept. 18) Just wonderin’.  When a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?   And if Iran says it’s not enriching uranium and no one’s there to verify it, do they develop fissile material?

Now Iran just obtained a seat on the General Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference – how crazy is that.  Like letting the cat guard the milk.

(Posted Sept. 15) Apparently some superheroes are against us.  But not really.  Whewww!!!   Fortunately it’s just the progressive actors who play them in movies.  Such as Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange) and Mark Ruffalo (the Hulk) as well as other minor actors not worth mentioning.  What are these misinformed thespians aligning themselves with.  Not sure they really know.  Well.  It’s with The Freedom for Marwan campaign, which pushes for the release of convicted, arch-terrorist mastermind Marwan Barghouti.  Convicted in 2004 and sentenced to five life sentences plus 40 years for orchestrating various heinous shooting sprees in Israel during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).  Killing and wounding too many innocent Israeli civilians including a Greek Orthodox monk outside Jerusalem.  As a comic book fan, and closet Batman and Aquaman (when I swim), it saddens me that these guardians of the universe can be associated with defending evil.  But then I remind myself it’s only the actors -what do they know anyway- and not really the superheroes. Unlike our own Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Natalie Portman (the Mighty Thor), Shira Haas (Sabra) and Liev Schreiber (Sabretooth).  All firmly on the side of good.

(Posted Sept 10) Honey cakes.  Honey cakes.  Honey cakes.  It’s that time of year.  Yummy!  Here comes Rosh HaShana 5787.  And its…. You guessed it.  Honey cake season.  That light brown loaf our baba used to make.  Starting a few weeks before Rosh HaShana and extending through Yom Kippur – a first bite to break the fast and usher in a sweet year- honey cakes are found throughout the country.  The familiar sight of the ready-made, pre-packaged, ‘assembly-line’ honey cakes wrapped in cheap cellophane found in Grocery stores.  The freshly baked honey cakes adorning window displays at local bakeries.  The exorbitantly priced, gourmet honey cake desserts offered at fancy Tel Aviv restaurants.  And of course, honey cakes festooning the festive, colorful, Rosh Hashana dinner tables across Israel.  I bake my own honey cake which is pretty good.  My wife and kids would beg to differ.  But these slightly glazed honey cakes -of my own culinary, shtetl inspired creation- are heartedly enjoyed by me as I gain several honey cake induced pounds.  Shana tova!

(Posted Sept. 8) Hoarding.  A combination of my own little wartime PTSD and some recent headlines about Iran trying to coordinate a multifront attack (is that capability still there?!) and October 7 like rumblings from the West Bank (or Judea & Samaria, depending if you wear a kippa and if its knitted and if it tilts to this side or that side -that’s a shtetl insider joke).  I digress and Yikes!  And we just had a nation-wide drill of the IDF’s top-level headquarters preparedness for such scenarios.  Double Yikes!  So ya.  I’m always checking and rechecking that we have way more than enough of some things.  The thought of entering another prolonged war and some stuff no longer available, even for a short time, scares the bejeebers out of me.   Just writing about it triggers the ‘go and buy’ dopamine hit.  Medications.  Toilet paper.  Bottled water.  Canned goods.  Also worried about the country running out of bullets.  But I can’t hoard those.

(Posted Sept. 5) An open letter to the zany and zealous mouthpieces of those delightful, anti-Israel protests held regularly in Toronto.  In the heavily Jewish Bathurst & Sheppard area no less.  Fear and harassment in the community?  Not by the hairs of our chinny chin chins.

Dear Friends.  

Are you serious.  

Sincerely,

Bruce Brown, a Zionist who does not rape children.  Who does not murder children.  Who does not eat children.  And, get this, who lives in Israel.

(Ed. note: To better understand what Bruce is talking about, go to this story on our website: Police open hate-crime investigation)

(Posted Sept. 1) Can you be more of an international embarrassment and liability?  Yes talking about Israeli’s antagonist extraordinaire and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. 

Declaring that Israel should kill ’30-40 Gazans a day’.  Seriously?!?!  His actual statement may have been more refined and qualified.  But it doesn’t really make a difference.  That’s the takeaway.  Like whose side is he on anyway.  Talk about giving our detractors ammunition to delegitimize our little shtetl.  Hello?!?! 

And a few days later.  Showing off in front of a gallows site under construction at a high security prison.  Seriously?!?!  The death penalty for terrorists.  Right or not – I think the former.  But like can you give us reason to be compared to an extremist state.  That’s the takeaway.  Like whose side is he on anyway.  Talk about giving our detractors ammunition to delegitimize our little shtetl.  Hello?!?! 

Serenity now!

(Posted August 28) Kites.  Color.  Childhood.  Hamas and friends should watch Mary Poppins with the final kite flying scene.  Remember that song, Let’s Go Fly A Kite.  Ya, I know.  Somewhat ethnocentric.  But still….  I have fond memories of flying kites with my kids.  Down the Mediterranean shoreline in Tel Aviv.  At the Ness Tziona kite flying festival. Along the green grounds of the Weizmann Institute.  Laughing and running.  Looking to the sky with awe.  Multi-shades and fancy.  Kites.

With your fist ‘olding tight
To the string of your kite

…oh, oh, oh!

Lets go fly a kite

Kites.  Fun.  Laughter.  Innocence.

Kites.  Not an instrument of war.

(Posted August 25) How principled can you be!  Ireland -one of the most anti-Israel and foggiest countries in the EU- insisted that its government’s new, 60$M executive jet NOT be equipped with Elbit’s FalconEye navigation system, which helps pilots navigate in fog -how ironic- and other difficult weather conditions.  Without this unique system the plane must be diverted to alternative airports.  This a part of the government’s official boycott of Israeli goods. So good luck to Prime Minister Michael Martin in landing his aircraft in Dublin.  

And despite some negative sentiment towards everything Israel, Elbit achieved over 32$B in backorders with Europe driving much of its export growth.  On a more personal muse.  The morning after Iran’s first attack on Israel (April 13 2024), I woke up not with fear and panic.  Well.  Okay.  Some of that.  But also great excitement regarding an investment opportunity which developed overnight.  Actually it was the wife’s suggestion.  After Israel successfully intercepted over three hundred missiles and drones – showcasing the strength of Israel’s defense industry- my wife had a eureka moment.  What better public relations for Israel’s defense industry.  Let’s buy stock in Elbit, a key player in that ecosystem.  We did.  And about eighteen months later we cashed in.  With about 150% profit.  This is not an endorsement to buy… blah, blah, blah….

Again.  Good luck to Prime Minister Martin.

(Posted August 21) Sometimes musings are terribly sad.  But should be shared.

Happy belated birthday beautiful Ariel.  Turned seven on August 5^th.  Thought about him and his younger brother Kfir and mother Shiri.  All murdered by Hamas shortly after their unbelievable and surreal abduction on Oct 7 2023.  

As I was driving home today.  “I Thank You Child” by Zakk Wylde shuffled onto my Spotify.  Always kills me, this song.  It was played by Yarden, the father who himself was held hostage, at the funeral of his family.  For Ariel and Kfir.  The lyrics chilling.  The frequent drum rolls haunting.

It was you who made living all worth the while

Oh, I thank you, my child

Comfort in your eyes 

For the warmth inside your smile

Faith’s done gone astray

It was you who made living all the while

All my fears repressed

Oh lovin’ you child it’s the best

This song.  Written almost thirty years ago.  Finds its devastating meaning today.  With the Bibas family tragedy.

How.

Listen to the song here:

(Posted August 18, 2026) And the beat goes on in the strait.  A bit quieter lately although may be heating up again with the 60day ‘ceasefire’ officially expired.  And while Iran occasionally lashed out over the last two months, they did not attack Israel.  How do you spell deterrence.  According to my Yiddisha mama, its spelled ‘Pftt.  Pftt.  Pftt‘. 

(August 14, 2026) Despite three years of varying degrees of warfare.  Moody’s biannual report of the Israeli economy was quite positive.  Basically, the report saw no pressures on Israel’s credit rating.  While the macro data remains strong, Israel still faces a complex geopolitical situation further complicated by upcoming elections (we pondered about how crazy that is in an earlier muse).  And Israeli’s inflation rate for the first half of 2026 fell to a historic five year low of 1.2% (vs Canada’s 2.6%).   As for my own pocketbook.  Haven’t had an infamous Israeli bank overdraft in years.  So all is fine. 

If that’s not enough economic voodoo talk for one musing.  According to one famous barometer.  Israel moved to second place in the Economist’s Big Mac Index.  Introduced in 1986, this tasty indicator compares the purchasing power parity across countries by measuring the price of a McDonald’s Big Mac -which most can relate to- against the benchmark U.S. burger.  So while a Big Mac in the U.S. costs $6.22.  In Israel it costs $7.67, the second most expensive place to buy the hamburger in the world,  Switzerland being the most pricey at a whopping (no reference to Wendy’s) $9.04.  While the cheapest Big Mac can be enjoyed in Indonesia at only $2.38.  Canada ranked 22^nd of the fifty-four countries considered, at $5.85.  Parity.  Smarity.  I’m going for my Big Mac fix.  Just after I finish writing this muse….

(August 11, 2026) Bravo Boy George.  We certainly will dance again!  And what better way than with his new reggae tune.  Now Boy George is dealing with a hostile backlash against his just stand for Israel.  Having to withdraw from London’s East End production of Jesus Christ Superstar where he was going to play – guess it.  King Herod.  Never a big Culture Club fan, but I am anyway -as a sign of support- going to download his greatest hits to my Spotify library.  And hoping to have a chance to buy a concert ticket should Boy George perform in Israel.  Kind of reminds me of Bob Dylan’s 1983 song Neighborhood Bully.  Also in defense of Israel.  I’m going to download that song as well.  Although don’t think he was hounded the way Boy George is now.  Sign of the times I guess.

+++++

Coming clean.  I sometimes find myself chanting, to no one in particular, that snappy little ditty ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’  Now why can’t we come up with something as catchy. With such an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters. George Gershwin. Irving Berlin.  Burt Bacharach.  Carole King.  Neil Diamond.  Leanard Choen.  Paul Simon.  Gene Simmons, Amy Winehouse.  Bob Dylan.  And yes, even the Buddhist Boy George.  And still… gurnish!  No wonder we’re losing the global PR battle

(August 8, 2026) Outside Basimta Café in Central Jerusalem.  Love the red shirt against a tiny sea of black.  Not sure I am shrugging because of the ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat or the lack of an ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat.  For the last six weeks Israeli headlines shouted about the cafe chaos.  With the ultra-religious blocking entrances and storming the café.  While shouting ‘Shabbos!  Shabbos!’   Upsetting the secular amongst us just wanting to enjoy our Saturday iced matchas.  So the wife and I thought we would check it out.  And.  Yes.  Buy something to support the business.  Uproar.  Not.  Blocked entrances.  Not.  Storming the café.  Not.  Albeit there were police barriers separating the devout protesters from the coffee drinkers.  The protesters being just a few dozen black clad, pious Jews.  Mostly teenagers.   And yes.  Shouting ‘Shabbos!  Shabbos!’  Certainly underwhelming in its reported mayhem.  Reminds me of the famous saying misattributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed.  If you do, you’re misinformed.”  But I did enjoy my iced matcha.

(August 6, 2026) Here we go again.  Another round of forever negotiations.  As someone who negotiates for a living.  The way things are going in the straits.  If I had to recommend a book on the subject to a new hire.  Between The Art of the Deal, A Presidential Edition by Donald J. Trump or The Real Art of the Deal by the Mullahs of Iran with a special forward by the IRGC. Well.  I would choose the latter.

(August 3) Bravo Yoav Segalovitz, Liberal Yesh Atid MK and Monsour Abbas, United Arab Ra’am MK and party head.  For breaking a glass ceiling where a Jewish lawmaker joins an Arab political party.  No less a political earthquake in my little shtetl.  Which can significantly impact coalition block arithmetic and posturing and strategy in the upcoming elections.  Now Ra’am can be considered a legitimate ‘Zionist’ partner when forming coalition blocks and potentially pushing the ‘center left/right’ party over the 60 seat majority threshold.  In our crazy parliamentary democracy defined by a multi-party (about fourteen!!), proportional representation system.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Israel’s proportional representation model of governance is the best parliamentary democracy system except for all other forms of working democracies.  Stay tuned for more amateurish political musings as we move towards Israel’s 26^th national election – five of them held since 2019. 

(August 1) Although both sides say they are open to diplomacy.  Neither really trusts the other.  And American military action, or its threat, continues.  I read headlines in the middle of the night -it’s a nervous habit lately– that the Dynamic Duo of Trump and Netanyahu may again strike in unison.  Possibly this weekend.  Yikes!  Prompting me, at 2:30 AM, to dash around the house stocking my safe room.  Bottled water.  Canned food.  Medicines. Documents. The beat goes on….

If it’s crazy here.  It’s insane in Italy.  With a recent online ‘Jew Hunt’ in the Milan area.  Before being removed, the digital forms urged reportings of Israelis and Italian Jews staying in local hotels.  The infamous Global Sumud Movement -yes, the one coordinating ‘peace and humanitarian’ flotillas to Gaza- was somehow connected.  Although they deny involvement?!  This deranged decree was looking to identify Zionist tourism and Zionist neo-colonization in Italy.  I’ll stick with stocking the saferoom.

Then there’s New York Mayor Mamdani, a Global Sumud Movement supporter, threatening to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he comes to New York.   But since discovered he has no legal right for such a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic antic.  Maybe Mandami should be arrested!  Or at least impeached.  For being a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic mayor.

Here’s a post Bruce sent us Friday, July 31:
WARTIME MUSINGS

Should credible threats against FLOTUS and ‘FSOTUS’ (first son..) not be justification to attack first.

As for yesterday’s summit. Netanyahu really can’t win. Explainer. If Trump now attacks without victory its ’cause of Netanyahu. If Trump now attacks with victory its ’cause of Trump. And, in Israel, if Trump doesn’t attack -victory or not- Netanyahu failed in his eighth meeting with Trump. And if Trump does attack -victory or not- half the country will vilify Bibi anyway. Missing a permutation?

Ya. I know. Kinda’ need a definition of victory for that musing to work.
And here in my little shtetle. We go to sleep unsure if there will be a code red in the middle of the night. And if not. We wake up thinking it will be tonight. How do you define stress?

Seemed like an appropriate way to end this musing.

Bruce Brown is a former Winnipegger who made aliyah to Israel over 35 years ago. Bruce first began writing for us – in his own inimitable style, in 2012, during what was known as “Operation Pillar of Defense.” His occasional musings on aspects of life in Israel that were far from what you’d typically read in other reports from Israel were hugely popular – both in the print Jewish Post & News and on this website.
We’re now glad to report that Bruce is back writing for us – this time on a regular basis. We will post Bruce’s reports as they arrive – with the date of each post at the beginning of that post.
Here’s some information about Bruce – and awards he’s received for his writing:

Bruce Brown.  Canadian born.  Now living in Israel (for a long time).  Bruce works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night.  He received the American Jewish Press Association’s award for writing excellence in 2019 and 2025.  And wrote the1998 satire, “An Israeli is….”.   Bruce’s visuals are AI-assisted and created with ChatGPT under his inimitable visual concept and creative direction.  Bruce’s musings are political, social, economic and personal.  With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic, irreverent and mischievous insights.

On a weekday afternoon in a community centre, the loudest table in the room is usually the Mah Jongg game, with the scoring done in pencil and the snacks taken very seriously. Every spring the National Mah Jongg League sends out a new card of hands, and for the first few weeks afterwards the games run slowly while everyone learns them.

When the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York staged Project Mah Jongg in 2010, in a show that later travelled to other museums, it treated the game as social history, following it from the 1920s through suburban living rooms and Catskills bungalow colonies. The exhibition’s argument was that a game hands down the room it was played in and the people around the table along with its rules, and those are the parts most likely to change when a game moves onto a screen.

Games with a season

Many of the games people remember best were tied to an occasion. Card tables came out at the cottage in July and went back into the closet after Labour Day. A euchre night, especially in southwestern Ontario, belonged to a hall or a legion branch. Canasta, which arrived from South America after the war and was a full-blown craze by the early 1950s, usually meant four friends on a Tuesday.

Mah Jongg keeps its own calendar. The League was founded in New York in 1937, and its annual card resets the game each year, so players across the continent learn the same new hands at the same time. That stops a game passed from one circle of friends to the next from splitting into a hundred local versions.

One card, one wheel

A game handed on by word of mouth tends to pick up house rules and personal habits as it moves between generations. Sit down at a Mah Jongg table or a physical casino wheel, and much of the game is governed by unwritten etiquette – verbal call bets handed down by older players, informal table compromises, and generational betting habits. Software replaces that social latitude with strict standardization. In a game of online roulette, for instance, the wheel geometry, bet timing, and paytables are hardcoded into the code, leaving no room for the local habits or informal dealer calls that shaped physical play for generations. What the software can’t pass along is the room. Live versions of the game, streamed from a studio with a person spinning the wheel and calling the number, bring back a voice and a face. The regulars are harder to stream. A studio table has players but no Thursday night, and none of them knows whose turn it is to bring the coffee.

At a card night, somebody always announced the last round, and the evening ended when the host started folding up the tables and people went looking for their coats. A screen doesn’t do that, so adults who play online for entertainment are better off settling a spending limit and a stopping time before they begin.

What outlasts the game

The summer resorts ran to a calendar as well, and Grossinger’s, which closed in 1986, is the one people still name first. The Forward’s piece on how Jews learned to be American at Grossinger’s, which this paper reprinted, reviews We Met at Grossinger’s, a documentary about the resort’s dining, dancing and shows and the thousands of couples who met there. The review doesn’t mention a single card game, and it doesn’t need to. What people remember about those summers is who they sat with. Ask someone who played in a regular game for years about a particular hand and they’ll usually draw a blank. They’ll know exactly who always turned up late with the rugelach, though, and whose kitchen the game moved to after the old community hall closed. Those are the details the next set of players inherits.

The League’s card is a large part of what keeps Mah Jongg going. It gives every table something new to argue over each year (plenty of groups order their cards together so nobody starts behind), and when next spring’s card arrives, the arguing at community centres in Winnipeg will start well before anyone has learned the new hands.