Features
Winnipeg’s own Jonas Chernick discusses how he made his latest movie, “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF”
By BERNIE BELLAN
Elsewhere on this website we have an article about a new movie, titled “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF”, which was slated to receive its Winnipeg premiere April 3.
As events have overtaken the original plan, filmmaker Jonas Chernick, who wrote, produced, and starred in the movie explained that the Canadian distributors of the film have changed how the movie will now roll out.
Instead of being shown in theatres, the movie will now go straight to video on April 3, including digital release on iTunes and Video on Demand through such providers as Shaw, Bell MTS, and Rogers.
We had a chance to talk with Chernick while he was cooped up in his Toronto home – along with his wife, two kids, a dog and a cat.
For those of our readers who are not already familiar with Chernick’s background, here’s a brief summary: He’s a graduate of Grant Park High School and the University of Manitoba. He is also an alumnus of Camp Massad, where he was both a camper and a counselor. He served on the staff of the Rady Jewish Community Centre and has appeared in four different productions of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre over the years.
“JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF” marks the third film that Chernick has written and produced and in which he has starred. The previous two were “My Awkward Sexual Adventure” (released in 2012) and “Borealis” (released in 2016).
As someone who has always maintained a strong connection to the Winnipeg Jewish community, we have been chronicling Chernick’s career in these pages for years. Making films is not an easy route to follow, but Chernick has shown that it is possible to forge a successful career path despite the many challenges that await any aspiring filmmaker.
But now, with the latest hurdle to overcome in the form of a pandemic virus that has thrown all the previous plans for unveiling the film across Canada out the window, Chernick is still looking forward to seeing the film find success in a different way than he might have otherwise anticipated – by going straight to video, something that usually doesn’t occur until at least six months after a movie has been shown in theatres.
We began our interview by asking about how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered plans for not just “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF”, but so many other movies that were slated to be released soon?
Chernick said: “They actually have announced that several major releases are going to come straight to our living rooms. ‘Trolls’ – which was expected to be a huge blockbuster, is going to be released straight to digital.”
I wondered whether Chernick himself was going to take a financial hit over the change in plans for how the movie is going to be released.
Chernick explained that “the way it works with my film and the way I think most films – certainly Canadian films, is we’ve already sold the Canadian rights to the movie to a Canadian distribution company; in our case, they’re called Northern Banner Releasing. I’ve done a number of films with them; they’re wonderful partners – and they’ve had the Canadian rights to this movie for years.
“The way it works is they help us make the film by prebuying the Canadian rights, so the revenue from Canada goes through them and, if the movie does very well – sure, we’ll get something called ‘overages’, which means some of the profits will flow through to the producers, including me. But, that’s not really a concern for my team. We just want the movie to be seen by as many people as we can. Nobody gets into the independent film business to make millions of dollars.
“Luckily for me, as an actor, writer, producer, story editor, consultant – I do fine with multiple projects, but nobody is in this to become a millionaire. We’re artists, we made a movie – and we’re very proud of it. We made one that we think people will really like – it’s an audience friendly movie.”
I said to Chernick that I always enjoy helping to promote one of his new movies, saying to him “It’s like having a baby again: You go through the same steps. This time around though, the baby’s in the hospital and you’re not sure when it’s going to come out.”
It had been four years since I last spoke with Chernick – just after “Borealis” was released, and I noted that he had mentioned that back in 2016, while he ”had several irons in the fire”, there was one movie in particular that he thought had the best chance of being made.
Chernick agreed, saying: “This was the one that people were most excited about when I pitched it, so I felt like we had a good chance at getting this one made.”
I noted that this was now the third film that Chernick had written and produced, and in which he had starred – and about which I had now written, so some day I will be able to write about “the pantheon of Jonas Chernick movies” because I’ve never used the word “pantheon” in a sentence before.
It was following release of “My Awkward Sexual Adventure” in 2012 that Chernick met the guy who eventually became the director of “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF”, Jeremy LaLonde. They were both at a California film festival and someone introduced them to each other as the two Canadians who had just made “sex comedies”. In time, Chernick would end up starring in a LaLonde film called “How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town” (which can be purchased on iTunes, Chernick said).
As people who are involved in the film industry are prone to do, Chernick and LaLonde traded ideas – and scripts, back and forth, bouncing ideas off one another, until the idea for “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF” began to take hold – in 2016.
According to Chernick though, before they began to focus on “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF”, LaLonde had asked him whether Chernick had “any ideas in the science fiction world” and Chernick said “I have one idea that’s not much of an idea and I kind of pitched it to him in probably two sentences – and he loved it and said ‘let’s develop that, let’s flesh that out’, and very quickly we turned that into what became “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF”.
We discussed how the drastic change in how the movie is going to be released might affect the kind of “buzz” that a movie needs to develop in order to be successful.
Chernick explained: “Normally a movie that gets released on digital or VOD (Video on Demand) doesn’t receive a lot of media attention because there are so many titles, but in this case we already have a lot of attention. We’ve won a bunch of awards and we’ve played at a bunch of prestigious festivals, and the media in Canada have been very supportive – so, thanks to people like you and other outlets, it’s going to make a splash and people are going to know about it.
“Everybody’s at home! What else are they going to do? You can have a laugh, feel charmed – and enjoy yourself for an hour and a half.”
I said to Chernick that I was amazed how many reviews of “JAMES VS. HIS FUTURE SELF” I had actually been able to find online. “It’s amazing,’ I said. “Your film has only been on the festival circuit, yet it already has so many reviews.”
“You’re right,” Chernick answered. “It’s only been on the festival circuit, but I will say that I am a tireless soldier when it comes to promoting my movies.”
“And almost all the reviews are favourable,” I noted – except for one, “from a guy who complained that the movie was a ‘rom com’ – early 2000s vintage. “
“But, when I read that,” I said to Chernick , “I thought to myself: ‘I love rom coms. I wish they would make more of them.”
“Absolutely,” Chernick said. “All of my movies are romantic comedies. I think most comedies are rom coms. We call this a ‘sci fi rom com’, but it’s less sci fi than it is rom com. It’s truly a romantic comedy hiding inside a time travel movie – with very little time travel…just enough to satisfy the science fiction geeks, as we learned when we were programmed by one of the top science fiction film festivals in the world – the Toronto After Dark Festival.
“We were worried that the audience was going to turn on us at that festival, but we ended up winning four awards at that festival.”
I noted that I wasn’t familiar with that particular festival. I said that I assumed it “was a festival for people who didn’t like to go out in the day time” (which got a laugh from Chernick).
Chernick went on to say that “the real surprise for us was getting nominated for Canadian Screen Awards because this is not the kind of film that typically gets acknowledged by the Academy (of Canadian Cinema and Television). This is a fun comedy with some raunchy humour.”
At that point in the interview I said to Chernick that I wanted to switch gears and, rather than talk more about how the film was made and how it’s going to be distributed, I wanted to talk about Daniel Stern, who really steals the movie when he appears in it.
I said that I purposely hadn’t read much about the movie before I watched it, but when I saw Daniel Stern appear for the first time, I said to myself: “I know that guy. He was in ‘Home Alone’. “ (Later, Chernick pointed out that Stern was also made famous for having been in the “City Slicker” movies.)
(Note: Stern plays an older version of Chernick, who comes back in time to try and persuade the character played by Chernick to abandon his dreams of time travel.)
“Where has Daniel Stern been all these years?” I asked Chernick.
“He kind of stepped away from the limelight after the ‘Home Alone’ and ‘City Slicker’ movies were such blockbuster,” Chernick explained. ”He wrote and directed some films and some TV and then, because he didn’t have to work, he kind of walked away a little bit and he became a reclusive artist.
“He lives on a property in California – away from all the action, and he makes gigantic bronze sculptures in his art studio – and sells them all over the world. He’s an amazing artist, but he hasn’t really done a lot of movies in the last several years because he doesn’t really like leaving home.
“But we went after him pretty aggressively because we just felt that he was the perfect guy for this part. We had a really short list that he was at the top of – for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because we have this nostalgic relationship with Daniel Stern based on his movies from the 80s and 90s – and our movie is about nostalgia; it’s about looking back.
“Also, he’s similar enough to me in his personality and his persona – his lovable loser, Jewish, nebbishy vibe – from his earlier years, but he’s become something else at the same time. He’s now a big guy (physically – as viewers might be surprised to see. Man, has Stern ever put on a lot of weight!) and somewhat intimidating, so we really liked the idea that he was once like me but that he’s evolved into something other than that – and we found that really interesting for his part.”
“And you provide a credible explanation as to why there’s no real physical similarity – except for one part of your anatomy (cue the penis jokes),” I suggested. “Now, that’s one that I found a bit of a stretch – no pun intended.”
I also asked Chernick about another actor who appears in the movie who, I admit, I had never heard of – until Chernick filled me in as to who she is and where I might have seen her. The character, Dr. Crowley, is head of a world class lab in which Chernick’s character is also a scientific researcher.
“Her name is Frances Conroy,” Chernick said. “She’s in many ways an acting icon. She was the matriarch on one of the most ground-breaking shows of all time: HBO’s ‘Six Feet Under’.”
“Oh,” I said, “but you know I never watched that.” (which shouldn’t excuse my ignorance because I usually am quite au courant with useless trivia).
“That show was nominated for five or six Emmys every year,” Chernick added. “She’s also a Broadway star. She’s also been one of the leads on a very popular show called “American Horror Story” (which I always assumed was a story about my own family) and most recently she played the mother of the Joker in the “Joker” movie.”
“Oh, that’s her,” I exclaimed, showing once again my ignorance of an all-important fact.
“Her character has this turn of phrase,” I noted, “when she reacts to someone swearing. What does she call it?” I asked.
“Swear scream…. She says it as if it’s a common phrase,” Chernick explained – as in, “If you’re going to ‘swear scream’ someone’s name, at least have something compelling to say when you finally have their attention.’ “
I said that she’s so ‘self contained’ when she appears in the movie – constantly showing incredible restraint when she’s subjected to a barrage of profanity from one or another of the characters in the movie, especially the character played by Daniel Stern. Also, I wondered, considering how she’s so terrific in her relatively small part, couldn’t Chernick have written a larger role for her?
“I think one of the appealing things for her,” Chernick explained, “is that this was an extended cameo for her. This is something that she would be able to come in and do relatively quickly. Now, it should be noted that, being the pro she is, she didn’t treat it that way at all. She had read so many books on particle physics (Conroy plays the part of a particle physicist, as does Chernick), she was so prepared – she was over prepared – she blew our minds how great she was.”
I said to Chernick that he must be so disappointed he won’t be able to premiere his movie in person in front of a Winnipeg audience.
“I was really excited to be there in front of my home town audience,” Chernick admitted, “with friends and family, but we’re going to try to do some sort of question and answer session online via Reddit or one of these online chat systems.”
I asked whether there’s anything else Chernick might like to add.
He said that “people are running out of things to watch right now. Why not watch a funny, entertaining movie by a Winnipeg Jew?”
Then, I thought to add the most important question that I had forgotten to ask:
“When is the movie going to open in Lithuania?” (in reference to the fact that the Lithuanian remake of “My Awkward Sexual Adventure”, titled “Nepatyres” (or “Unexperienced” in English) had the third best box office opening for any movie ever shown in that country).
Chernick laughed and said, “it’s opening (or slated to open) in the United States on May 1st and in the U.K. on April 27th, but I’m not sure about Lithuania.”
“The Baltic states will be key to your success,” I suggested.
Features
Part 4 of the delusional Winnipeg con man story: The guy in LA who figured out who everyone else was that had been conned
By BERNIE BELLAN This is the fourth part of a story about a delusional Winnipegger who believes he is someone of great wealth and has spent the better part of 30 years contacting people all over the world telling them that he wants to invest in their businesses or projects.
The other three parts have been posted here at: Part 1: “The delusional Winnipeg con man who actually believed his own elaborate con and led one victim in Africa to consider committing suicide”; Part 2: “Meeting the con man for the first time in 2021; and Part 3: “An explosive email arrives in my inbox on January 16.”
As I noted in my last chapter, it was some time after that January 16 email arrived before I realized it had been sent by the person I’m calling Rick here – even though the email was supposedly sent by someone else. I still don’t understand why Rick chose to disguise the fact that he was the one who sent the email that detailed the litany of deception that the man I’ve been calling Fred Devlin perpetrated.
There are so many things I still don’t understand about Rick. He’s gone from being extremely cordial to vicious and back again to being cordial.
At first I didn’t keep a record of all the texts I received from Rick. He kept throwing out names I had never heard of – as if I had any idea what he was talking about. I tried to get him to slow down, just tell me who all these different individuals were whose names he was citing.
Rick kept coming back to one name in particular. I’ll call him Jonathan. Rick wrote that Jonathan was trying to get the RCMP in Ontario (where apparently Jonathan lived) to conduct a criminal investigation of Devlin. Since texts are often jumbled I had to keep asking Rick to explain why Jonathan, in particular – out of all the names Rick had mentioned to me who were victims of Devlin’s vast cons, had a story that might convince a police force in Canada to investigate Devlin. What about the others? I wondered. Didn’t they all have reasons to file complaints with police forces.
Over a period of days – in which I was constantly exchanging texts with Rick (I should explain that I’m mostly retired and can devote myself to writing about stories that grab my interest, as opposed to what I used to have to do previously, which was often to write about subjects in which I had no real interest.), I kept asking Rick more and more questions to get a better idea of the scope of Devlin’s activities through the years.
I told Rick that the January 16 email I had received whetted my appetite to the point where I would publish on my website that email along with my own story how I had come to meet Devlin. My original intention was to keep adding to that story as I learned more information about Devlin’s bizarre pattern of duping individuals into thinking he was rich and powerful. However, as I’ve already explained I was intimidated into pulling that story off my website once I got that libel chill letter from a lawyer.
Even though I chickened out on that one, I told Rick I still wanted to pursue talking to the various individuals he had named in various texts whom he described as having fallen prey to Devlin’s machinations. In time I was able to speak to seven different individuals, all of whom gave me permission to record my conversations with them. Strangely enough, once I had wrapped up speaking to everyone who I thought could offer a piece of the puzzle that is Fred Devlin, I was contacted by one more individual, whom I happen to know very well. That person’s name had come up in some of Rick’s texts – and not in a favourable way.
That particular individual said they knew their name had been discussed in negative terms by one or more of the individuals with whom I had spoken and they wanted to set the record straight – but not on the record. They kept me on the phone for more than two hours, but always insisting that nothing they had said could be reported. So, what was the point of their calling me in the first place? I wondered.
That particular conversation, frustrating as it was, was no stranger than some of the other conversations I had with some of the other individuals whose names had been mentioned at various times in Rick’s texts. Conversations were often meandering and had little to do with the story I was trying to chase down. But, I’m a good listener – and I let everyone who wanted to ramble on do that. Trying to make sense of what they told me had happened between each of them and Devlin wasn’t easy and I kept coming back to the original question that first occurred to me when I met Devlin: How long would it have taken you to realize the guy was a nutcase?
Following are excerpts from texts I received from Rick – and remember, I din’t have a clue who he was talking about in most cases. Again, names have been changed to protect individuals’ identities where they asked not to have their names divulged. The texts may seem somewhat disjointed and incoherent, but reading them will give you a sense of how wide a net Devlin cast in his delusion that he was a hugely successful businessman.
The first text here begins with a reference to someone named Bryan. I had been told earlier by Rick that Bryan Hunter was with the RCMP and was working on an investigation of Devlin at the behest of Jonathan who, as I noted earlier, was urging the RCMP to investigate Devlin.
“…just waiting for Bryan to get to work on Tuesday so he can transfer the case from York police to Winnipeg RCMP and get started with the investigation
“Charlie in Africa is still getting death threats and harassment from random strangers
“Avi … is ready to speak with you now and share his story about Fred – his number in Vegas is …
“Also Dan Winthrop is ready to speak with you now too. He’s the guy Fred used to fly around the world to these imaginary meetings to buy millions of dollars of planes and airports and all kinds of crazy stuff. He’s been with Fred for years doing this and has all the evidence and stories about everything. His number is …
“I’m still trying to get Jonathan Soloway to call you but he has trust issues with journalists
“Once you talk to Avi and Dan, you’ll have all you need.
“I’m telling you man this is almost like a major motion film it’s so beyond crazy.
(The following text is about someone whom I’ll call Dan thanking Rick for the work he’s done to try to bring Devlin to justice, also referring to being willing to talk to me.)
“Dan says ‘Thank you so much I do really appreciate the tone of your email and also your great work. It was very timely for you to do this and the end result from my 40 year project was absolute devastation. Fred destroyed and lied in person to top executives of an international company for years and now I’m in the mud because I associated with him. Yes I definitely will talk with this guy’ (That would be me).
“ ‘I will probably fly to Winnipeg to have a chat with him. I’ve been reviewing my story in my head and trying to make it succinct. So I will send you my story before I talk with this guy. Your timing was absolutely excellent. I don’t know if my work will ever continue that I’ve spent so many years on. But you as a businessman and a publisher knows what it’s like to persevere. I accept the suffering that I’m going through now and better to face that Fred is a psychopath now than further down the road. Fred definitely needs to be stopped and is using the names of top leaders in Winnipeg as companies that he says he owns.
“ ‘So you’re doing great work and I honor that.
“ ‘Thank you’ “
A couple more weeks passed between texts with Rick. I wrote to him: “…you keep saying charges are about to be laid, and from what I can see all that the RCMP have done is assigned a case number to Jonathan’s complaint.
“It’s hard for me to believe that the RCMP was taking the complaint seriously.”
Rick responded: “You have no idea the obstacles and challenges we’ve been through to get to this point. I’ve already cried about every obstacle along the way, so I’m not gonna repeat myself and bore both of us. I understand I’m just frustrated and I want this to be over with and I want that psychopath to be locked away, so he can’t hurt any more people.
I wanted to know though, what exactly Devlin had done to Rick that caused him such anguish. I asked him: “Can you quantify how you lost millions of dollars? Was it put into some sort of investment?”
Rick responded: “I didn’t lose millions through a direct cash investment. The loss was through reliance and opportunity cost over roughly two years. Fred promised a $10 million investment to acquire and scale my magazine and represented that $1 million would be advanced to stabilize me personally while the larger transaction was finalized. Based on those representations, I stopped pursuing other investors, shared my full business plan, disclosed confidential and personal information, and spent thousands of hours in daily calls, planning sessions, and operational preparation with Fred, my staff, and outside collaborators.
“We had approximately 20 people lined up and ready to execute once funding arrived, and the company’s growth was effectively put on hold while we waited. During that time I passed on other legitimate opportunities and investors because I believed the deal was real and imminent. The financial loss is the value of years of diverted labor, stalled growth, foregone funding opportunities, and business damage caused by reliance on repeated promises that were never fulfilled. That is what I mean when I say I lost millions of dollars.”
I returned to asking the original question that had been troubling me from the first time I received that original email on January 16: “How can so many highly intelligent people have been conned by Fred – and for so long? I smelled a rat the first time I met him. What was it about him that persuaded so many ostensibly intelligent people to go along with the nonsense he was spewing out when what he was promising could never be backed up?”
Rick responded: “That question is exactly the right one, and it’s really the heart of the story.
“Fred didn’t succeed because people were unintelligent. He succeeded because he was highly adaptive and targeted people’s specific vulnerabilities. He didn’t tell the same story to everyone. He mirrored each person’s values, language, and aspirations, then slowly escalated his claims once trust was established.
“In my case, I’m highly intelligent and have run a successful media company for decades, but I’m also autistic. That combination can mean I take people at their word. I’m less attuned to manipulation cues, and I’m more willing to suspend disbelief if something feels theoretically possible. Over time, especially with constant contact, that matters. When someone speaks with absolute confidence day after day, hour after hour, the brain normalizes the claims.
“The unifying factor across victims wasn’t stupidity, it was money used as leverage. Fred consistently dangled imminent, life changing financial relief. Promised investments, salaries, ownership positions, acquisitions. Once people believed funding was coming, they reorganized their lives around it. They stopped pursuing alternatives. They waited. That waiting is where the damage happens.
“He also used social proof. He placed people into roles within a supposedly massive organization, introduced them to each other, referenced meetings with officials, institutions, and high status figures. Each person assumed someone else had already verified the claims. No one realized they were all operating on the same unverified promises.
“Some victims were vulnerable due to age, idealism, faith, or personal hardship. Others were experienced professionals who believed they were seeing only a small piece of a much larger, already validated operation. Fred exploited optimism, trust, and the very human tendency to believe that extraordinary opportunities sometimes really do exist.
“In hindsight, the claims were impossible. But cons don’t work in hindsight, they work in real time, incrementally, when skepticism is postponed just a little longer each day because the payoff is always right around the corner.
“That’s how intelligent people get caught. Not all at once, but slowly, while trying to act in good faith.
“I’m absolutely willing to go on the record and share every aspect of my experience in detail, including timelines, communications, documents, and the specific representations that were made to me over the two year period. My goal is transparency and preventing further harm to others. I will also work with everyone I’ve interviewed and spoken to so that they can share their stories with you directly as well.”
After reading that particular text – which was well written, I came to the conclusion that the January 16 email I had received had been written by Rick, not by Charlie. I wondered why that was, so I asked Rick why he had used Charlie to send that email? Rick refused to answer that question and said that he felt like he was being “interrogated” by me. I told him that his response only added to my puzzlement over this entire story – which I still find so baffling to understand. Rick’s responses to subsequent questions became increasingly frazzled.
In our final exchange of texts – when I persisted in asking him why he had written that January 16 email, not Charlie, he wrote: “You’re throwing a monkey wrench into the whole thing right now by being a little too pushy and a little too aggressive
“This is always been about stopping Fred from taking more victims, not about you writing a story about our traumas
“The only person who benefits there is you”
In the meantime, I wanted to begin speaking to others who had been victimized by Fred Devlin.
The first person I spoke to by phone is someone I’m going to call Dan Winthrop. Dan Winthrop was an aeronautical engineer who had a plan to bring jet planes from Israel and convert them into water bombers.
Coming next: Dan Winthrop’s story
Features
Israeli Government Report Ranks World’s 10 Most Influential Antisemites
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism published this week its official ranking of the 10 most influential antisemitic figures in the world in 2025, and the No. 1 spot was given to social media influencer Dan Bilzerian, who is running for US Congress in Florida.
The Armenian-American entrepreneur and US military veteran is a prominent critic of Israel and Judaism who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. He has said he wants to “kill Israelis” and thinks Judaism is “terrible.” He recently claimed antisemitism is a “made-up term” and there is a “big Jewish supremacy problem” in the United States. He formally filed paperwork earlier this month to run as a Republican and unseat incumbent Jewish Rep. Randy Fine in Florida’s 6th Congressional District.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is the world’s second most influential antisemite, according to Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which highlighted her use of terms such as “genocide,” “siege,” and “mass starvation” in reference to Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip.
Third place was given to Egyptian comedian and former television host Bassem Youssef, followed by far-right American political commentator Candace Owens in fourth place and Palestinian-British journalist and editor Abdel Bari Atwan in fifth.
The list includes American imam Omar Suleiman, Denmark-based doctor Anastasia Maria Loupis – who has shared online conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel – far-right commentator and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and conspiracist Ian Carroll.
Rounding out the top 10 is far-right podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who regularly promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish influence.
Israel said the 10 most “prominent influencers in the global antisemitic and anti-Zionist arena in 2025” were selected based on “both the severity of their actions/statements and the scope of their influence” related to their activities last year. “Each of them has expressed antisemitic views or promoted false information related to Jews, Israel, or both,” the ministry explained. The list does not include individuals with formal political or government positions.
Each individual was ranked based on their influence on social media, but also other factors such as their repeated appearances on news channels, “perceived influence on public opinion, and prominence in certain communities.” The ministry also took into consideration each person’s “level of impact and risk,” which includes how often they upload antisemitic and anti-Israeli posts on social media. The report was released ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah.
In a separate section of the report dedicated to antisemitic and anti-Israel influencers in the US, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs singled out YouTuber and children’s educator Ms. Rachel, who has “increasingly used her social media accounts to amplify pro-Palestinian messages and criticize Israel.”
“Her posts have been interpreted by pro-Israel organizations as one-sided and hostile to Israel, and organizations such as StopAntisemitism have accused her of spreading anti-Israel or pro-Hamas propaganda and called for an examination of her activities,” the ministry stated.
Features
4000 Quarters for my Uncle Lew – a new story by David Topper
Introduction: David Topper has been featured on this website many times. His stories about Albert Einstein have drawn huge audiences, but David’s interests range far beyond writing about science. Most recently, we have featured stories about “Jews in strange places.”
If you want to find all of David Topper’s stories that have appeared on this site, just enter his name in our search engine (the magnifying glass). Here’s David’s latest story – but be warned: As David told me, it’s a “story”:
I adored my Uncle Lew. He was one of many uncles in the large extended family on my mother’s side. Of course, this means that there were many aunts too. But there were not many cousins – at least, none my age. And I was an only child; so I guess you could call me an “only cousin” too. At least when I was very young – say, from ages 6 through 12 or so – until many cousins were eventually born. In all, it seems that I was alone, in those early years.
But I’m digressing already, and I just want to tell you about my grandmother’s brother, my Uncle Lew. You see, he lived in the same city when I was very young, and he came to visit a lot – especially on Sundays, when there was a large gathering of the extended family at my grandmother’s home, with lots of food. He came with his wife, Aunt Lil. But it was Lew who was especially nice to me. He always came with jokes; jokes that the adults laughed at – and I did too, but often not really knowing what was funny.
Most importantly, for me, sometime during the visit, Uncle Lew would sneak up behind me and put his hand in the right side-pocket of my trousers. I knew what was happening, and so I’d just walk away to a quiet part of the house, reach inside my pocket, and pull out a shiny quarter. Rubbing it in my hands, thinking about what I might buy, and putting it back in my pocket – I was happy, and set for the week to come. You must realize that this was sometime in the late 1940s and into the 1950s – and a quarter was worth a lot to a kid. These were the days when a penny could buy a nice treat at the candy store nearby where I lived. And, well you do the math: a quarter was worth 25 pennies. Yes, I adored Uncle Lew, although I’m not sure I would have used that word at the time.
Speaking of money. I remember that the family, especially the men, talked a lot about money. I’m not sure that many of them had a lot of it, since most were of the working class. Maybe that’s why they talked about it. Although I suspect that rich people spend a lot of time talking about money too. Yet, what do I know?
I mention this because, at some point – I don’t remember the date or my age – but Uncle Lew and Aunt Lil moved to another city. Thus: no more shiny quarters in my pocket at the Sunday dinners. Instead, I listened to the talk, mainly among the men, about Uncle Lew. And as best I could surmise: Uncle Lew owed people money that he didn’t have, and so he had to skedaddle to save his skin. It made me think about my quarters, and if I had put them in the bank, maybe I could have helped Uncle Lew pay back his debts. But now it was too late. Uncle Lew was gone and I spent all the quarters on myself – my selfish self, I thought sadly.
But Uncle Lew was not completely out of my life. A few years later he came to town for a short visit. He came for a weekend; and had Sunday dinner with the family. I guess he thought it was safe enough. And nothing happened. So, he did it again, a few months later. And so it went. Thus, Uncle Lew was not out of my life completely. And yes, a quarter was deposited in my pocket on the Sunday dinners. As well, by now, I had a bank account; and I occasionally put Uncle Lew’s quarters in the bank – just in case he might need a loan someday, I thought.
Oh, I forgot to mention: he now came alone. From the talk of the adults, I figured out that he and Aunt Lil were divorced – something my mother later explained to me, because in those days it was not a common occurrence. And people were often embarrassed to talk about it.
Now fast forward several years to the late 1950s, when I was in High School. One day Uncle Lew appeared out of nowhere, carrying all that he owned in a few suitcases. I don’t know why, but he stayed with us. Being an only child, I had a room of my own and so the family got a cot from the basement and they put it in my room. I was okay with this, since I always liked Uncle Lew and was glad to know that he was safe with us.
Our first night together – I in my bed and he a few feet away in the cot – was memorable. Because, in the middle of the night, I woke up and saw a spark of light moving around the room near Uncle Lew’s cot. I guess I forgot to tell you that Uncle Lew was a smoker. Of course, smoking was common in those days, so it was no big thing that he smoked. In fact, if you watch any movie from that period, every time people walk into a room and sit down to talk, someone takes out a pack of cigarettes and they all light up. But I digress, again. Anyway, as you may have surmised, the spark of light moving around in the dead of night was Uncle Lew having a smoke. He was so addicted to cigarettes that he couldn’t get through a night’s sleep without one. And so it went: night after night.
Also, at the time he moved in with me, I was working on building a model airplane out of balsa wood. I usually worked on this in the evenings, after I did all my homework. The parts were strewn across a table in my room, and Uncle Lew often watched me assemble the plane – saying he hoped to see the plane actually fly someday. He said he enjoyed watching me put the thing together (since he seemed to have nothing else to do), and I enjoyed the conversations. I glued pieces of balsa wood together and he smoked cigarettes, depositing the ashes in a tray on my table.
In a short time, I came to understand why Uncle Lew was here. When I was at school during the day, my relatives were taking turns driving Uncle Lew to the hospital for treatments. In those days, people didn’t talk about some things directly. Especially cancer, which was a word that was often spoken in a hushed voice. So that was it; he had lung cancer.
At the same time, Uncle Lew was seeing a dentist for the pain he was having with a tooth in the right side of his mouth. He showed it to me one day, while I was working on my airplane. He was sure that the dentist knew what he was doing, and Uncle Lew was looking forward to getting it removed and replaced with a new tooth. We didn’t talk about the cancer, but looking back on this I can only surmise that Uncle Lew was in denial – or he was overly optimistic about the cancer treatments.
In a short time, the tooth was removed and replaced by the false one. Uncle Lew was elated, and told me that it was the best $1000 he ever spent. Yes, $1000 for the tooth. I don’t know where he got the money. And I’m afraid to ask, for obvious reasons. But I now also question the ethics of that dentist, allowing a patient undergoing cancer treatments to spend so much money. But maybe the dentist didn’t know. Then again, where were my relatives in all this? I am only thinking of this now. As for all things in life while growing up: what is, is reality for that time, and you just go with the flow. Only later, looking back, do you see the quirks and foibles of the past.
Indeed, did I think of helping Uncle Lew with his dental bill? I had a bank account. And some of that money was from deposits of Uncle Lew’s quarters. I don’t know. What I do remember is that not long after the new tooth was planted in his mouth, relieving him of that pain, the cancer got worse – and he spent the rest of his days in the hospital. And that’s where he died.
At the funeral I wanted to mourn. To grieve at the loss of this beloved uncle, who lived with me in the last stage of his life.
But I kept thinking about that tooth – that damned $1000 tooth. While saying the prayer for the dead, the Kaddish, I wanted to concentrate on the meaning of the prayer – even though I couldn’t read Hebrew. But that costly tooth kept flashing in front of me – like the spark of Uncle Lew’s cigarette in the middle of the night.
Even when the body was lowered into the grave, and I took my turn throwing several shovels of dirt over Uncle Lew’s plain wooden coffin – in my mind, I was doing the math: how many quarters are there in $1000?
In a way, on that day, and in my mind, I really buried a tooth – and it just so happened that a body came along with it.
My one consolation in all this is that about a few weeks after the funeral, I finished building my airplane; and I took it out to an empty ball-field near where I lived. Just me and my airplane.
The propeller was attached to a rubber band, and so I wound it up and gave it a push. It took off, rising up, almost as high as the trees beyond the outfield. Then it banked a bit toward the left; and, after heading back towards me, it moved in a circle – almost overhead. It continued circling – rather as if it were caught in a tornado – moving down and down.
When it crashed into a heap of shards of balsa wood right next to me standing on the pitcher’s mound … I laughed, a deep laugh – a laugh that turned into crying. A deep cry – a cry I sorely needed.
Sitting in that empty field next to my shattered airplane – looking up and beyond the trees – I screamed to the sky. “There are 4000 quarters in $1000.”
I walked home, and went to my room. Sitting at my empty table, I said to myself out loud. “I guess I should build another airplane. What do you think Uncle Lew? Let’s go to the store and use some of those quarters to buy another model airplane. Maybe this one won’t be jinxed. What do you think?”
But before leaving the house – and for the first time since Uncle Lew died – I was able to fold up that cot and put it back in the basement.