By GERRY POSNER Recently a group of ex-Winnipeggers came together – in Montreal this time, in the form of a reunion of four women – long time pals originally from Winnipeg, now all living elsewhere. They were: the former Marcia Billinkoff Schnoor, now of Toronto; Shayla Mindell, now of Ottawa; Toby Morantz, now of Montreal; and Ruth Bellan Cooperstock, formerly of Victoria, and now of Montreal. I heard about this particular reunion from Marcia. Since it had been a long time since I’d been in touch with Shayla Mindell, recently I decided to contact her. The story on the reunion of the four women will be the subject of a different story at another time.

For those readers who go back a distance in Winnipeg, they will know the Mindell name from Shayla’s parents, Joe and Rose Mindell of blessed memory. Some might even recall the maternal grandparents as in Sam and Faiga Malamed, long time Winnipeg residents. There were several stories on Sam Malamed and they all are contained in the Jewish Post newspaper archives located at the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada – available to anyone who wants to read them. Or you could just enter the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba ’s Endowment’s Book of Life and there you will find compelling accounts of members of the Malamed Mindell Mishpachah. Shayla Mindell is a granddaughter of the Malameds.

Shayla is a product of the north end of Winnipeg, having grown up at 530 Enniskillen Avenue in West Kildonan. She is also a sister to Sheldon Mindell, a name familiar to many Winnipeggers (for his longtime work in raising funds for such organizations as the Jewish Foundation and Riverview Health Centre, also his involvement in owning Rumors Comedy Club).
Shayla attended Edmund Partridge School and later West Kildonan Collegiate. Not long after her graduation from high school, Shayla set foot on the University of Manitoba grounds and it was there that she obtained her B.A. in 1963.
Shayla went on to get a degree in Library Science in 1964 from the University of British Columbia. After her marriage to Mark Doctoroff, also a former Winnipegger, she did a lot of travelling – owing to Mark’s studies and later, his work with the Canadian government – in the USA, Brazil and then, in Australia. From 1972 to 1980, during a time when she was back living in Canada, Shayla worked part time at the Algonquin College Library in Ottawa, where she was employed for eight years. Along the way, that is, during her stay in Australia, her children, both daughters, Fern and Jill Doctoroff, were born. In 1980, she and Mark separated.

Shayla had a long and rewarding career with the federal government as the head of a library and records management department in Ottawa. It was in 2003 that she retired and she now spends her time taking courses of various kinds, studying Spanish, volunteering ( wonder where that gene came from – hello Sam Malamed) and savouring her time with her two grandchildren, Hailey and Oliver, now 16, who live in Ottawa nearby. In short, she is busier in retirement than she was even when she worked full time.

Now, what Shayla did recently was to get her family to join her in Winnipeg for her brother Sheldon and his wife Tannis Mindell’s 50th wedding anniversary. In doing that, she went, as they say, ”the whole nine yards.” Aside from taking everyone around to see the sights of Winnipeg – via a guided tour, she also included a visit to the cemetery to see the graves of her grandparents, Sam and Faiga Malamed; her parents, Joe and Rose Mindell; and her aunt and uncle, Lily and Max Leibl. The grandkids were exposed to some serious Winnipeg Jewish history. They even placed stones on the graves of their great-great grandparents.
Lastly, she took the group to her former residence on Enniskillen. (Doesn’t everyone want to do this? I, for sure, do.) Then, she went the extra step and knocked on the door of what had been her childhood home and asked for an invitation to enter. Seek and ye shall find it is said and, for Shayla that phrase worked. Shayla said to me, ”What a great experience.” The house was much the same, though naturally enough, there were renovations, such as to the bathroom and kitchen. I suspect that the chance to see your parent or grandparent’s childhood home with your parent showing you around would be a moving experience for many.

Shayla falls into a club of ex-Winnipeggers (a large club indeed) who, though removed from the city for a long time, still live in the city in their hearts. She learned well from her parents and grandparents.

By MYRON LOVE After a bit of a hiatus, it is nice to see Yolanda Papini Pollock and Winnipeg  Friends of Israel – the group she founded ten years ago – back in action. 
“I was frustrated by the media bias (against Israel), the coverage without context, the attempts to delegitimize Israel and deny our people the right of self-defense,” she said in an earlier interview. “Violent demonstrations, hate crimes, antisemitic comics, blood libel allegations, and hostile media coverage were daily events that led people to question whether Israel has the right to exist or defend herself against repeated terror attacks.”
In fighting back, over the years WFI has not only introduced its supporters to pro-Israel speakers. Papini Pollock has also brought in speakers from the Yazidi and Kurdish communities; a Christian minister from Africa; the pro-Israel son of one of the founders of Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef; and Kasim Hafeez, the WFI’s first guest speaker who, at the time, was doing outreach and education programming for B’nai Brith locally. (Hafeez is a British-born Muslim – of Pakistani origin – who switched from being virulently anti-Israel to supporting Zionism after reading Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel.”) 
Over the past four months, Papini Pollock and WFI have organized three programs – in conjunction with her frequent partners – the Christian Zionist Bridges for Peace.  Last June, the two groups brought Rabbi Leo Dee to Winnipeg via Zoom to talk about how he has overcome the murder of his wife and two daughters at the hands of Palestinian terrorists about 18 months ago.
Most recently, in the week before Yom Tov, the partnering organizations held a program highlighting the Druze community in Israel and Syria  – at the Rady JCC – and hosted an evening with Dr. Ted Rosenberg, a former Winnipegger, who quit his position as a professor at the University of British Columbia School of Medicine – in January of 2024 – after 30 years of teaching, in protest against the rising tide of antisemitism  in his faculty, the university as a whole, and universities in general across the country.
Rosenberg was in Winnipeg not only to speak about his own experience as a victim of anti-Semitism, but also to talk about his book, “Ayekha (Where Are You?) A Memoir and Reflection about Antisemism, Anti-Zionism and the Western Response to October 7, 2023.”
In the book Rosenberg recounts his disappointment about what happened to him at UBC and challenges readers to take action to fight back against antisemitism.
The book’s title, he pointed out, comes from the part of Genesis where God confronts Adam and Eve – who are hiding after committing the sin of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge – and demands to know “Ayekha (Where Are You?)”.
 “Rabbi  Joseph Soloveichik taught that if we don’t ask ourselves, “Ayekha?” – Where am I? – we will ask ourselves “Eicha?” – how does this happen,” Rosenberg noted. “ ‘Eicha’ is the name for the Book of Lamentations.”
By contrast, Rosenberg continued, when God asked the question of Moses from the burning bush, Moses’ response was “hineni” – “here I am.”
“It is my solemn wish, Rosenberg said, “that our leaders and people in the Diaspora will stand up and likewise answer the question with hineni.”
The author began his presentation by reminiscing about growing up in Winnipeg – where he still has many family members and friends.  He attended Talmud Torah as a kid – later graduating from the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine.
“Winnipeg was a special place to grow up,” he recalled.  “It was a golden age then for Canadian Jewry.”
“There was always an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in Canada,” he commented, “but after October 7, it became a torrent. This was something else.  I knew we were in trouble.”
He referred to the numerous libels that were being spread.  “My son was told that the Jews were not chosen,” he recounted.  “Israel stood accused of stealing another people’s land.  I began to think about how I could protect my children, teach them how to protect themselves.”
Rosenberg was spurred to action after 225 UBC medical students signed a petition titled “A Call for Action on Gaza” which, according to an article in the Vancouver Jewish Independent, “called for a ceasefire, condemned Israel as “a settler-colonial state, accused Israel of collective punishment through indiscriminate bombing of civilians and claimed that Palestinian people have been continually abused, traumatized and killed by the settler state of Israel and its Western allies for over 75 years.”
 
The response from the administration, Rosenberg noted, was that there was nothing they could do because this was all happening on social media.
“For me, this was a red flag,” he recalled.  “I decided to take the bull by the horns. I believed that the administration didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.”
Rosenberg wrote a letter to the dean and president of the university, pointing out that Zionism is the culmination of the Jewish people re-establishing their homeland on their ancestral land.  He further refuted the lies about “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide” and others. He noted that half of Israeli Jews are originally from Arab countries and that the Jews were in the land of Israel 1000 years before Islam was born. He cited the work of writer and anthropologist Adam Louis Klein, who argued that antisemitism is akin to a religious cult. He warned about the dangers not only to Jewish medical students and faculty but also Jewish patients across Canada who may have to deal with doctors who graduated from a university steeped in antisemitic beliefs.  He advocated that the administration work with the faculty to educate students about antisemitism and turn down the temperature.
Rosenberg described the response that he received from the dean was as boilerplate stuff about the university’s emphasis on respect and inclusiveness. “I further reached out to (B.C. Premier) David Eby, the Lieutenant-Governor and (pro-Israel) Members of Parliament David Housefather and Marco Mendocino and still got nothing,” he recounted.  “I had nowhere else to go.”
Rosenberg chose to resign his position, wrote about his decision and took to the media to explain his decision. He says he received a lot of positive response.
In January 2024, he went on a medical mission to Israel.  “I felt in Israel that I could breathe again,’ he said. “I was very impressed by the resilience of the people and the humanity from both Arabs and Jews.”
In May of 2024, he began writing a blog on The Times of Israel – whIch led to “Ayekha”.
Before turning to a more detailed description of his book, Rosenberg provided an overview of Canada and the world vis-à-vis Israel and the Jews – and a gloomy overview it was.  He pointed to ongoing antisemitic violence throughout the Western world, egged on by political leaders, unions and educational leadership  – including our own federal government leaders in Canada. He suggested that antisemitic speech has become normalized.  He further suggested that Israel is more isolated than ever and that even the Jewish community in Canada is divided.
“I am pessimistic about the future – but remain hopeful,” Rosenberg said.
On the positive side, he cited examples of Jewish communities taking action to “reclaim our story” and pursue legal redress.  He furthere welcomed the support of Christian communities such as Bridges for Peace.
He also expressed his gratitude for the largely positive reaction to “Ayekha,” which has opened the eyes of many readers to the reality of the situation in Israel.
“Each one of us has a role to play,” Rosenberg suggested to his audience. “We are commanded to be a light unto the nations. Most people are ill-informed and under informed about the entire subject.  We have to reach out and try to educate.  If you need to be better informed so that you are more confident explaining these complex issues, you can read my book.”
Rosenberg’s book is part memoir, part historical documentation about the author’s experience , he said. All book sales support the first Jewish day school in Victoria, BC, founded on October 7, 2024.  “Ayekha” is available on Amazon.

By Mira Fox September 27, 2025

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

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Strap on your best smooth-soled Italian loafers and get ready to spring over some cobblestones, because Robert Langdon — everyone’s favorite tweed-jacketed, baritone-voiced, handsome Harvard “symbologist” — is back, and he’s racing through the streets of Prague.

In Dan Brown’s newest thriller, however, there’s no Dante or Mary Magdalene; Brown is finally veering away from the Christian mythos that drove all of his previous adventures such as The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. This time, he’s taking on something older and far more mysterious: Judaism.

Each of Brown’s symbology books has a central guiding myth or story, i.e. the Holy Grail, Dante’s Inferno or the Founding Fathers’ involvement with Freemasonry. The Secret of Secrets follows the same formula, and its opening moments make its central myth obvious. Within the first few pages of the book, the Golem of Prague — which for some reason Brown insists on spelling as Golěm — has already murdered someone.

The story proceeds about as you’d expect, if you’ve read any of the previous Robert Langdon novels; though it has been eight years since we last read about the Harvard professor’s misadventures, he remains dashing and impressively fit for his age, as Brown reminds us regularly, though this time we hear less about his penchant for tweed. Langdon still has a photographic memory, which still comes in handy as he deciphers various codes, and the book is still loaded with long tangents about the history of various buildings and artifacts that Langdon is sprinting by. (Even while desperately attempting to escape from a gunman in a historic library, the symbologist has the presence of mind to consider the artist behind the frescoes on the ceiling.)

But the book is notably lacking in something surprising: the Jewish history of Prague, or of the Golem, or blood libel. There are no Hebrew translations or reinterpretations of Talmudic texts. We don’t learn some little known midrash that holds a secretive double meaning. These are the kinds of factoids that usually drive Brown’s mysteries, yet they’re absent.

The plot revolves, instead, around a damsel in distress, who readers may remember from the previous Langdon books: The beautiful “noetic scientist” Katherine Solomon, who is about to publish an academic treatise detailing her research on human consciousness and death. Apparently some very powerful people want to destroy her manuscript, so the action and mystery unfold across Prague as Langdon attempts to save Katherine, save her book, and — hey why not — save all of Prague and also maybe the United States. And, somewhere in there, a Golem is on the loose.

Brown’s previous novels have delved into various Christian mysteries with vigor and palpable fascination; whatever Brown’s many foibles as a writer, you could tell that he was excited by the myth of the Holy Grail, which took centerstage in The DaVinci Code, which he reinterpreted to be an allegory about a love affair between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In Angels and Demons, Brown has great fun with the secretive inner workings of the Vatican, and Inferno is laden with delighted diversions into Christian history and ideas about the afterlife, courtesy of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

In The Secret of Secrets, Brown outlines the basic myth of the Golem: Rabbi Judah Loew, a 16th century Talmudic scholar and leader of Prague’s Jewish community, created a magic guardian out of clay to protect the ghetto from antisemitic attacks. Loew engraved the word “emet,” or truth, in Hebrew on its forehead to bring it to life. Eventually the Golem turned on the rabbi, almost killing him, until Loew managed to rub away the aleph in “emet,” turning the word to “met,” or death, and stopping the creature; its body was placed in an attic in case it was needed again.

That’s about all we get, yet there’s so much more to explore. In another version of the story, Loew made sure to erase the aleph from the Golem’s forehead every Shabbat to allow it to rest; instead of going on a murderous rampage, the creature was eventually destroyed because it desecrated the holy day. According to some stories, a Nazi tried to ransack the attic where the Golem was stored, and died mysteriously. Others say its body was stowed in a genizah, where sacred Jewish texts are placed since they cannot be destroyed.

Then there is the actual Jewish history, the blood libel, accusations of witchcraft and antisemitic laws that kept Jews segregated in Prague’s ghetto. There is also Loew’s own life as a lauded Talmudic scholar — not a Kabbalist, as Brown describes him — and, of course, a rich tradition of Talmudic and midrashic exegesis. The setting is rife with the kind of symbols and mystery that Brown uses as fodder in all his other thrillers, inventing secret societies and mystical artifacts lost to history.

Instead, The Secret of Secrets has no Jewish characters and very little Jewish history. Though Brown sprinkles in a few of Prague’s Jewish landmarks — the Old-New Synagogue and the city’s historic Jewish cemetery — the book still manages, despite its Golem centerpiece, to spend most of its time in churches. When Langdon first encounters the Golem and sees its forehead inscription, Brown notes that the symbologist “did not read Hebrew well,” though the professor, who specializes in religion, regularly relies on his fluency in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic and even a fake angelic language invented by two crackpot mediums that was never spoken by more than a handful of people. At one point, the Golem is described as arriving “like some kind of ascendant Christ.”

The real focus of the book is an imaginary bit of science having to do with human consciousness and life after death, a topic Brown has been exploring in the Langdon books for some time now. His interest in religion seems to stem from the idea that they are all, fundamentally, the same, and that all religions are reaching for proof that life persists after death.

But Judaism doesn’t. There are concepts — which Brown overemphasizes — like gilgul or gehenna that imply some post-death experience, but they’re not central to Jewish thought. Though one of the characters reads Loew’s most famous text, Brown clearly didn’t. (Like most works of Jewish commentary, it’s hardly the kind of work one buys in a bookstore and reads in a sitting.)

It’s not as though Brown’s previous books got everything, or even most things, right about Christianity. His wacky inventions are part of the fun — no one is reading a thriller about a fictional professor of an imaginary discipline for accuracy. The Golem is a myth, a rich story that has remained resonant over the centuries due to its flexibility and ability to be reinterpreted; Brown can make whatever he wants of it. The problem is that he has made so little.

Mira Fox is a reporter at the Forward. Get in touch at fox@forward.com or on Twitter @miraefox.

• fox@forward.com
• @miraefox

This story was originally published on the Forward.