Niv

Six years ago, we could never have imagined that Niv would turn into the juggernaut it has become. We set out with a simple mission in May 2020: to foster a platform for the Jewish perspective, in all its diverse, pluralistic, and ever-changing forms of expression. 

At the time, The Canadian Jewish News (CJN)—Canada’s largest Jewish publication—announced it was ceasing all print and online publication. Without The CJN, we were concerned about where this left Canadian Jewish news and storytelling. We live in a time when valued journalistic institutions and important literary publications are being dismantled and gutted. As a result, our society is less informed and prone to disinformation and limited perspectives. We didn’t want to see Canada’s Jewish media landscape shrink. And so, we decided to create a Jewish online magazine, geared toward arts and culture, as well as community news and literary works. 

From the start, we wanted our publication to be a home for different Jewish voices and worldviews, focusing on the creative work and community lead initiatives that positively impact not only the Jewish community but society at large in Canada and abroad. We wanted Niv to uplift and provide our readers with a feeling of optimism about the world. Though that doesn’t mean we shied away from challenging topics, like antisemitism, to cover. But we didn’t want those narratives to prevail because there is, as we firmly believe, so much good in the world to highlight. 

We decided on the name Niv because one of its meanings, in Hebrew, includes the word expression, which encapsulates our mission. In spring 2020, deep in the pandemic, we got to work right away. We started building our website and putting out calls for writers to contribute to our first issue. Throughout Niv’s six years, it has just been us two working on all aspects of the publication from the website and logo design, to writing and editing of articles, to designing artwork for each article and issue cover, to managing the social media channels and newsletter, and to networking in the Jewish community. It has been an absolute labour of love to volunteer our time to this digital magazine after our full-time work hours. And that comes down to believing in the publication wholeheartedly and simply because we have loved working on every issue. It hasn’t always been easy. We’ve gone through numerous website redesigns and spent many late nights getting publications ready in time, but we have learnt from, and valued, each lesson that’s come our way. 

As Niv has grown, so have we. We were in our mid-twenties when we started this publication and fresh into our careers. Now we are in our thirties and a little less bright eyed and bushy tailed (not really, but the swift passage of time and our inability to pull all-nighters anymore continues to mystify us). To pursue a journalistic endeavour is to be fuelled by curiosity and our curiosity to capture Jewish experiences and learn from our writers, readers, and interviewees has kept us going. In fact, that appetite to engage with an array of Jewish perspectives is one of the reasons we bonded. That and because we were both theatre kids. We first met in 2015 in a playwriting class during our undergraduate degrees at the University of Toronto, and actually spent most of the whole semester not speaking to one another, until that fateful second-last class. Our first outing as friends happened soon after and while we gossiped about school, realized we both laugh a lot, and mused about what courses we’d like to take next year, it came to our attention we had, individually, found that most Jewish spaces we had entered did not feel welcoming despite those spaces promising to be inviting for all. With Niv we wanted to create the inclusivity we had missed out on, and channel our interest and experience in arts and culture sectors. We hope our efforts have created an atmosphere that is welcoming. 

Our steadfast friendship, and respect for each other’s opinions and work ethic has been the foundation of this publication’s success. They say never mix business and friendship, but friendship is the secret ingredient that has made this publication thrive and truly be boundless in its creativity. We may have even reached our peak with our Winter 2026 cover featuring two Canadian moose friends wearing gold chains, featuring Jewish stars, trotting through a field of snow.

In six years we have worked with more than 200 authors from dozens of countries around the world, published 449 articles, and completed 28 issues. It has been a pleasure and privilege working with every writer and artist, providing a platform for the expansive world of Jewish arts and culture. 

As we wind down operations for at least a year, we are leaving the Jewish media landscape in a better place than where we found it six years ago. The CJN returned, publishing vital news and offering a wide range of engaging and informative podcasts; and Parchment, the only literary magazine devoted to Canadian Jewish writing, relaunched this spring. It’s heartening to see this revitalization and hunger for Jewish publications. 

We hope you have enjoyed reading the digital pages of Niv and continue to find our stories engaging. And in a world that is constantly demanding we dim our Jewish identity we hope you continue to shine it brightly and boldly.

In 2023, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) launched a project with community-based organizations in Ontario to improve equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts. One of the projects chosen was SHVILIM. A collaborative effort between FENTSTER, No Silence on Race, and Shoreline Collaboratives.

FENTSTER is a Jewish arts and culture organization. It ran primarily as a window gallery in downtown Toronto for nearly nine years but has recently shifted into focusing on organizing arts events celebrating diverse Jewish culture and inclusivity. No Silence on Race is an organization that highlights multi-ethnic and multi-racial Jews through programming. And Shorelines Collaboratives is a consultancy that helps organizations foster equitable workplaces. 

SHIVILM is dedicated to “enhancing the visibility of Jewish culture in Ontario’s arts landscape while supporting greater understanding about anti-Jewish oppression.”

SHVILIM, which in Hebrew means “paths,” has created an educational resource called Bridging Worlds that opens up new pathways for understanding antisemitism and Jewish history and culture in Ontario.

‍Bridging Worlds offers tools for Jews to find Jewish belonging in an increasingly hostile world while also offering historical artifacts and facts to help those in and outside of the Jewish community understand Jewish history and antisemitism.

The series offers a four-part resource guide filled with different perspectives and teachings. It includes information on tropes and stereotypes, as well as anonymous testimonials from arts workers and artists on their experiences in the community, which were taken from a survey SHVILIM conducted, and more.

One survey participant noted that “Sometimes it feels difficult and slightly unsafe to be Jewish in non-Jewish spaces. Sometimes it feels difficult and slightly unsafe to be Jewish within Jewish spaces.” On the small corner of the internet SHVILIM has created free, accessible, and visually beautiful documents that hope to repair and deepen the understanding of Jewish oppression.

I spoke with project director Evelyn Tauben, art historian, curator, and founder of FENTSTER; and Sarah Margles, research and strategic design lead, with over twenty years of practice in anti-oppression counselling, on the intricacies of realizing Bridging Worlds. 

Before diving into the documents for yourself, read on to find out how it came together.

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When I started working within the Jewish community, I was surprised at how many different approaches there are to defining antisemitism. Was it difficult when doing this project, and in reaching out to other people in and outside of the Jewish community, in defining it?

Margles: We didn’t define it on purpose. In a lot of ways, the way we designed The Dynamics of the Antisemitism (the second document in the series), it is meant to be an alternative to a definition. There’s three dynamics [Exaggeration of Power, Blame, and Isolation]. Is the incident that you’re looking at playing into one of those dynamics? If it does, then Jews are targeted. We offer a framework for how to look at things that are happening or things that are said and then assess where it falls on how harmful it is.

Tauben: There’s a preoccupation of labelling. And people want you to just say, Yes, this is antisemitism. And the truth is, things are very complicated, and it’s not always necessary to even put a label on it. Just to name something here is a bit sticky and maybe harmful to Jews. We’re serving the arts community, right? How can we have better conversations in the arts world about how we think about these tropes?

How did both of your professional experiences help you create this initiative and shape it into what it is?

Margles: I have quite an extensive background in thinking about systems of oppression and I have an education background. I come at it thinking about teaching and educating and helping people understand complicated things. I spent many years working in DEI spaces. I’ve had very few experiences of antisemitism in my life, and all of them have been in those spaces. And some were fierce. A couple of them were career altering, where I had to leave my job. When I had flagged the problem, there was no awareness, no willingness to look at it. I’ve been thinking for a long time, especially in that DEI work, about what are the elements that make it easy for some groups to build strong allyship, to change public discourse on a form of targeting, and why is it so hard for Jews to do that? A lot of it is the nature of antisemitism. In many ways, antisemitism isn’t about Jews. It’s about these imaginary people who have these magical, strong powers that have very little to do with who we are. 

Tauben: I’ve been working in Jewish arts and culture for over 20 years, and it feels like, depending on the day, I’m in either a straddling position or a bridge-building position, or in an isolated and stuck place where I’m between these worlds, and sometimes each world has a lot of suspiciousness about the other and a lack of understanding about the other. I’ve kind of made it my role to move between worlds and try to keep talking to everybody. I’ve been a part of an anti-oppression community for over 15 years. It feeds into how I think about the world and how I do my work. But this was the first time I felt I could really bring those commitments together and make an offering to the arts community that honours Jewish stories, where people in the arts are at, what they need, and what they’re up against—what we’re all up against. I felt called to do it, which is a mixed bag because it’s more fun to curate and produce concerts than to spend two years of your life thinking about antisemitism.

There are many elements within each of the documents. Was it difficult to find a balance in how much material to show regarding, for instance, survey responses or historical findings on antisemitism or addressing the current climate we are in?

Tauben: A few things we did stick in quite late in the game because it created more balance to the narrative. We have this section about Jews and power, and that Jewish power is exaggerated, which is part of the dynamic of antisemitism. But there was a feeling that we must also name that white-presenting Jews do have privilege. And there’s a tension because there are some scenarios where we have privilege and power, and sometimes where we’re targeted and the power is exaggerated. And that’s important to at least name, even though it’s not dealt with in a very substantial way.

How important was it to have voices outside of the Jewish community joining in on this project?

Margles: It was important for a number of reasons. One is we needed internal checks and balances. We can’t see our own biases, and so as much as we may be intending for things to follow a certain set of values and certain lines of integrity, we needed people who would be able to catch us if we fell off and weren’t aware of it. Also, we wanted to bring in their voices and their perspectives around a lot of the issues and make sure we are capturing diverse viewpoints. We also wanted to make sure the documents are understandable to someone who’s not in the community. Having eyes on this from a ton of different perspectives in and out of the Jewish community was hugely important to maintain the integrity and ensure that the quality of what we produced was top notch.

Tauben: That happened all the time where someone came in with a different lens, and I was like, Oh, wow. I just totally missed this because I am an Ashkenazi Jew. And they said it with love, but sometimes with ferocity as the situation warranted. Our core philosophy about this work is that we won’t be able to end antisemitism alone. That’s maybe, or largely, why some of the other approaches are not working. Because we’re shouting off onto the side by ourselves, saying, Please take us seriously. The most personally transformative part of this work was developing these close relationships with allies. I actually did not know this level of allyship was possible.

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Was there anything else you learned about during the creation of these materials that surprised you?

Margles: Learning happened all the time and everybody who was part of the project wanted to have their boundaries pushed. They wanted to hear different perspectives. They wanted to clarify their own perspectives, which is very different from a polarized environment where you dig your heels in and you just block out anything that’s different from how you see the world. It was very hopeful in a lot of ways, in ways that walking through the world these days doesn’t feel so hopeful.

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Four questions for reflection conclude each chapter of Bridging World‍‍, and I wonder, after creating these materials, what questions are you left with?

Tauben: The main question that we’re actively grappling with is: Where do we go from here?

Some people have had to go on to more, better compensated jobs, but enough people believe that there’s something here that we created that has legs and that there’s more possibility. And so, we’re asking ourselves: If we had more funding and if we took more time, what would that look like? How can we use what we learned and created for future initiatives? What’s the best use of our time and energy? What do people really need and want right now? What’s possible? The best thing we could think of doing, might not be possible right now. People are really worn out from being so scared and discouraged for so long. They may not have capacity for some of the offerings we’re interested in, like dialogue spaces that bring people together who have different lived experiences and perspectives. And then, another question is who wants to walk this path with us as we try to go forward? Can this be for other communities beyond the arts community? Who else is already thinking in these ways that we can partner with? There’s a lot of questions. At the end of this, it still feels very unresolved.

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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Gabor Levai and Csaba Kurti didn’t know they were Jewish until they were teenagers. 

“It wasn’t uncommon for Jews growing up in Hungary to not know they were Jewish,” Levai said. 

Born in Budapest, Levai was only told he was Jewish when he was a young teenager. He remembers his parents sat him down during a family lunch to tell him the truth regarding his religious background.

Near the end of high school, after the fall of communism, he had the opportunity to travel to Israel for a six-week program. The experience changed his life. He reconnected with his Jewish roots and when he returned home he attended Jewish clubs and became president of the Hungarian branch of the Union of Jewish Students (which is similar to Hillel). 

Kurti also didn’t know he was Jewish until he was 12, and his parents even chose the name, Csaba, as it was a “pure Hungarian name” with no Jewish affiliation, he said. 

His parents “tried to hide everything” due to rampant antisemitism. When Kurti’s mom shared the “family secret” swearing him to not tell any friends or neighbours, Kurti said he didn’t even know what the Holocaust was, let alone Judaism.

“It was not a topic that was taught in the communist era, it was not in the curriculum,” he said. 

Once the communist regime fell, Kurti’s parents went back to synagogue in the early 1990s. Around this time, he began to gather other young Jews to come together for Hanukkah parties and other events, feeling an inherent and deep connection with Judaism. 

Levai said his and Kurti’s paths crossed in Hungary. 

Kurti together with his brother, formed the JMPoint Foundation (Jewish Meeting Point), a community platform that included matchmaking, heritage preservation, formal and non-formal education, family camps, and cultural programs, bringing thousands of Hungarian-speaking Jews together from around the world. Levai led the Hungarian Jewish Youth Association (UJS - Union of Jewish Students) and volunteered extensively. 

Since 1999, Levai has been an entrepreneur with a focus on communication, media, and business consulting. Kurti has worked as an IT project manager and business analyst and served as the strategic director of the Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community of Hungary.

“In both cases, community work was something we did out of love—while maintaining full-time careers,” Levai said. It was this strong history of community building that followed them when they immigrated to Canada. 

When they both met in Toronto, almost 10 years ago, the same question came to both of them: “Where is the Hungarian-Jewish community here—and if it doesn’t exist, why don’t we build it?”

Levai and Kurti found that Toronto was home to many Hungarian Jews, but people often gathered in small groups; there was no central meeting hub or communal space to come together. 

They wanted to change that and in 2019 they launched Memories Without Borders, an organization for the Hungarian Jewish diaspora. 

The organization has put on numerous events over the years which include Shabbat dinners for friends and families to gather, excursions and cultural trips around the city, but one of their proudest accomplishments is The Senior Academy, which gives workshops, lectures, and interactive activities to Jewish and non-Jewish seniors.

During the pandemic, Kurti and Levai realized how isolated seniors had become so they began donating food weekly for three months to seniors in need, and realized that providing resources and connection to this demographic was of high-importance for their organization. 

They also recently launched a rental program for equipment such as cameras, tripods, professional lighting, microphones and more to provide professional tools for community programs, educational purposes and content creation for those who may have difficulty accessing high-end equipment. 

Levai and Kurti are also working on grants and sponsors to find their own physical space to work out of, right now, they rent from the Prosserman JCC, but they would like a central place to work from and put on events. 

While they work towards that goal, their work is ever-meaningful, as they help foster community and engage Hungarian Jews in the city. Their upcoming Hanukkah party on December 16, will be one of their biggest events yet, with more than 100 tickets sold. 

“It's very heartwarming, it feels really good (to bring people together),” Levai said. ”You know, it's still exciting when we meet a fellow Hungarian. For example, today we met someone and they said, ‘Oh, I have Hungarian roots too.’ They don’t speak the language but their mother and grandmother do. So we just invited them to the Hanukkah party. That’s when we see, this is working. We’ve built something and we can see it grow.”

Bonnie Chandler, a dentist from Toronto, loves the outdoors. It started from when she was a kid going camping with her dad. She later spent three seasons in Algonquin Park doing fisheries research, where she spent off-hours canoeing and kayaking. 

Her adventures in the wild never stopped and she has instilled that same intrepid spirit in the next generation. Just as Bonnie’s father took her on nature trips, she takes her children on wilderness expeditions. 

I had the pleasure of speaking to Bonnie and her daughter Yael, a product designer, about their most-recent trip to the Nahanni River, known by the Dehcho Dene people as Nahʔą Dehé, in the Northwest Territories.

From August 1 until August 14, Bonnie and Yael lived alongside the river and its surrounding land, topped with spindly trees. They went with Black Feather, a company that has been taking participants on “self-propelled trips by foot, canoe, sea kayak, ski and raft in unique wilderness locales” for over 50 years.

However, it is not their first trek through the North. The mother-daughter duo, who I am campaigning to go on The Amazing Race Canada, have paddled through the Wind River in the Yukon, the Kiel River in the Northwest Territories, and now the Nahanni River. But it never gets old. From bear sightings to fishing to witnessing breath-taking canyons, nature’s beauty remains striking. And it is their time together, amongst the unbelievable landscapes that leads to a strengthening of connection between family, community, and the land we dwell on.

Some of us will never go on wilderness excursions, our adventures will lead us elsewhere, but reading can transport you anywhere. Next stop: Nahanni River.

What does it mean for you both, as mother and daughter, to take these trips together?

Bonnie: I’m very blessed that she would come with me three times. And we get along great. We help each other out. But Yael is stronger than me right now. She’s a real bear.

Yael: This trip we were with two sets of couples, and then two single people who came on their own. I think all of them have kids, and they all said, I wish that my daughter, my son, would come with me. When we went on our first trip, and I was telling some of my friends, they were shocked that I was willing to spend two weeks sharing a tent with my mom.

Bonnie: I was the oldest one on this trip and Yael was the youngest by about 30 years. On other trips there wasn’t such a difference, but I have to say, everyone loved Yael. I find Yael extremely happy on these trips. You can’t wipe that smile off her face.

How do you accommodate your Jewish practice on these trips?

Bonnie: We keep kosher, so we ate a vegetarian diet on the trip.

Yael: We explained to people what kashrut means, why we follow it. One of our guides this year, Charlie, his dad was a Black Feather guide before him. He said that his dad once took a group of Orthodox Jews on a private trip and all the guides made sure everything was kosher. They brought new pots and pans and brought kosher meat. They’re really accommodating. The company is fantastic.

How are the meals prepared?

The guides know how to cook. When you go on a canoe trip on your own, you’re packing dehydrated food and oatmeal, it’s not super inspiring. They take no dried food. It’s all fresh and they plan their meals so it lasts until day 12 and day 14 without a refrigerator. They make cinnamon buns from scratch. You see the guides the night before making the dough, and in the morning, rolling up the cinnamon buns. Each trip we’ve been on, the guides prefer different levels of involvement in cooking from the participants. On our second trip, they were happy for everyone to help. Everyone was always in the “kitchen,” which is two overturned canoes in an L shape, cutting stuff up and stirring food over the fire. You’re never hungry.

Bonnie: We always help with the dishes. Everybody’s happy to chip in.

What did your Judaism bring to this experience?

Bonnie: This year we had a woman on our trip who was born Jewish but hasn’t practiced Judaism in a long time. One night, she came up to us after dinner and she said, It’s my dad's yahrzeit, I usually light a candle. And so our guide gave us a candle. Yael said Kaddish, and she repeated after me. She didn’t know the words. I don't know if she’s ever said it before, it was special.

 Over the course of your travels, what have you learned from one another?

Yael: My mom has a lot of experience doing trips like this and adventuring and being in nature. I’m always learning about different trees and plants and flowers from her, and even just how she puts up her tent or how she takes it down.

I'm sure that it can get hard sometimes when you’re out there.

Yael: There are challenges we had on this trip. The weather was great and not too cold, because it can get cold up there. But there was one day when it poured for 30 hours straight. We were cold and wet, and paddling in the rain, and then setting up our tent in the rain. And tents are not waterproof. The guides were making a fire with wet wood. But it’s all part of the experience, and it’s kind of character building and team building.

Bonnie: I think more people should do it. It's pretty expensive. That’s the one thing. I think that's why people who go on the trip are a little older. But it can be really life changing.

How so?

Yael: You have to be self-reliant, but as a group. And turning off your phone and shoving it at the bottom of your pack and not seeing it for two weeks is an amazing feeling. You have tons of questions on these trips like, “What tree is that?” “What if I can’t start a fire?” Needing to figure stuff out on your own is an experience we don’t always have today. When you’re on a trip like this, you have 14 days and you’re starting at point A and you need to get to point B. But in between that time, the guides and the group are constantly making decisions about how far we can go based on the group’s energy or the weather. Those are the things that matter. Coming back from that and going back to work in tech, a high-pressure environment, I just had this feeling that the deadlines at work are based on nothing. It feels so artificial, in a sense, after being in nature and seeing what really matters and where we should be putting our effort.

If your air conditioner is broken on a Wednesday between 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., “the best place to be,” joked Eva Karpati, is at the National Council of Jewish Women Canada’s (NCJWC) office in North York, Toronto. For those two hours, while you may be cooling off, your heart will be warmed with community as you and a bevy of women, quilt, perhaps gossip, and hear at least one woman brag about a grandchild.

The Toronto Jewish Quilting Project first met 21 years ago on a blistering cold December night at Barbara Frum Library. Any season, it seems, is one fit for quilting when you’re surrounded by new and old friends creating for good. That evening, 25 women gathered to make quilts for those touched by cancer. The Angel Quilts, as they would go on to be called, have offered comfort to over 500 people.

Prior to this first meeting, Karpati, the TJQP’s founder, had, unfortunately, experienced her own cancer journey. Diagnosed November 2001, she went through a year of chemotherapy and radiation. At the end of her treatment, as a form of therapy, she started taking quilting lessons at Wellspring. Making tangible art proved to be a form of meditation. In addition to learning how to quilt, Karpati wanted to gift one to a young Jewish woman in her support group. At the time, there wasn’t a resource in Toronto that donated quilts to those affected by cancer, and so she had to request one from Ottawa. 

Three years after that fateful December night, and many other days and nights when Karpati hauled mounds of fabrics in and out of her car, her initiative was adopted by the NCJWC Toronto chapter.

And when I met Karpati in that aired condition office on July 2, along with the other women in the group, the same fire that must have helped fuel those hauls, was effervescent. She bustled around the room we were in. You do not need to know how to sew, you do not need to be Jewish, nor do you need to be a survivor of cancer to attend, she told me. You just, I realized, have to want to be there. With one quilter remarking: “Everybody is from everywhere. Everyone has their own history. No one judges, or snips.”

As Karpati moved around the large room, where there were more than a dozen women gathered, she lit up when speaking about their work and the community she helped build. The women, in most cases, do not know who will be the one to find warmth in the fabric their hands have sewed. The process is by referral, someone who knows someone will request the quilt but the organization does not give the recipient the quilt directly. Instead, they’ll often give it to the person who initially contacted them. Though most are in the city, recipients can be of any faith or gender. It is simply for someone going through treatment.

It takes around two months to finish a quilt, and different quilts are being made at the same time. I asked the terrible question to one quilter on if she had a favourite quilt. To which she responded: “They’re all special. In the end they’re all beautiful.”

However, there are favourite stories.

Karpati’s is about the first quilt the TJQP made and donated. It was to her friend, and now fellow quilter, Susie.

In 2004, Susie got leukemia and was living in London, Ontario. She had known Karpati when they had worked at the JCC in Toronto as fitness instructors but had lost touch over the years. When Susie moved back to Toronto to recover at her sister’s, Susie shared with me, a knock came at the door and it was Karpati with a “beautiful quilt. I loved it.”

When Susie moved into her own place, she decided to hang up her quilt on the wall. “We want all our quilts to become,” Karpati remarked, “a memento of a journey that the recipient has gone on” and now, Susie’s quilt is “a piece of art.” It has been five years since Susie started quilting with the other women, and making pieces of art for folks who are in the same place she once was. “I still don’t know everybody’s names and I’m terrible at sewing,” but, Susie adds, “It’s nice to know I’m part of this too. After having gotten one myself, now I can give back.”

In addition to quilters offering their time, the TJQP has received donations from Fabricland and even from an acquaintance of longtime quilter Mary’s daughter’s Sunday school teacher’s husband, Bob.

Mary had a lovely Jewish friend, Sheila Fruitman, who she played bridge with. Fruitman would always talk about attending Karpati’s quilting sessions. One day, Mary asked if she could come with, and for the past 10 years she hasn’t stopped. Which is where Bob comes in. His wife, Janet, was a talented quilter and after she passed away, Bob offered them her materials. There was one container of beautiful quilting blocks that had been machine sewn. When Aliza, another quilter, saw these blocks she took them home and put them together to make a beautiful quilt top. “Whoever has the quilt” said Mary, “has something started by a woman who passed away. It’s a tribute to this person. Bob was so pleased to see this quilt that was in honour of his wife.”

In faith-based charitable organizations, it is assumed everyone prays to the same God, which I gather is why Mary, when I first approached her, told me she wasn’t Jewish. But isn’t it wonderful to see that within the Jewish community we still gather with people from different religions, and in some respects feel like family to one another. In fact, that’s how Mary describes it: “it’s like a family.” And family comes in all shapes, sizes, and practices.

From floral quilts, to a Wizard of Oz quilt, to a heart quilt, to a lantern quilt, to a jewel quilt, to the layers of blocks and tops that have been hand and machine-sewed, each stitch was made with purpose over tea and sweets and laughter, and likely tears. When I visited the NCJWC office that day, a mix-and-match quilt was being crafted. “It represents the group when we all come together. It’s not a set pattern.” But, I myself will add, that’s what makes it work.

Eva Karpati, Susie, Mary, and all the other women I spoke to that day made me feel instantly welcomed. If you have the opportunity to quilt your way through life, or just through two hours of a Wednesday of your life, with friends who feel like family in an air-conditioned room, giving the reprieve of comfort to those in need—well, The Toronto Jewish Quilting Project truly does sound like one of the best places you can be.

The synagogue I serve has recently enlisted a sofer to restore our Torah scrolls. Alongside this sacred work, he has given us the equally holy gift of educating the various age groups of our congregation. During a visit to our early childhood centre, he showed the young children the opening words of the Torah about the creation of our world in Genesis. When he asked what God created first, he received some delightful answers. 

“Pizza!” one boy exclaimed. 

Then a three-year-old girl offered her own guess: “Love.” 

Not long afterward, we were honoured to host another extraordinary teacher: Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of murdered hostage Hersh. 

Two years ago, I invited a group of friends to celebrate my 30th birthday with me, and participate in all my favourite activities to mark this exciting, and slightly terrifying, milestone. But I’ll always remember that weekend for another reason because in the news it was announced that the group of young hostages known as “the Beautiful Six,” which included Hersh, were murdered. We were sitting in a bar when I read the news from my phone, announcing their deaths. Immediately, we all went into mourning.The itinerary for the remainder of the weekend quickly shifted from partying to protesting, and from jubilation to quiet sharing. Several friends no longer had the emotional energy to participate at all.

When Rachel sat in our sanctuary, CNBC anchor Sara Eisen asked her how she felt knowing that so much of the Jewish world was mourning her beloved son alongside her. 

Had it been me, I suspect I would have been angry. 

“You did not know my son,” I might have thought. “Why are you making this personal tragedy about yourselves?” 

But Rachel was gracious enough to share her grief and her love for Hersh with us.  

Rachel’s book, When We See You Again, is a stunning, heart-wrenching testament to pain and to love. In it, and during her talk, she describes grief as a badge of love and mentioned that the only thing getting her out of bed during the 330 days of her son’s captivity was prayer, and the words “hope is mandatory.” 

These days, hope is still hard to find. 

Stories of antisemitism that once seemed confined to history books about 1920s Europe no longer feel distant. Jews are being pushed out of institutions. Security has become a fixture inside Jewish spaces that once relied only on outdoor guards. Missing-person posters are torn down. No longer the ones of hostages but those like Toronto teen Esther, who has thankfully returned home, but whose only crime was being born a Jew. 

I am scared and I am angry. 

I know I’m not alone. 

Yet, like Rachel, I have hope. Perhaps it is not entirely warranted. But it is necessary for survival. 

After Hersh’s death, Rachel learned that what had sustained his hope in captivity was the wisdom he gleaned from Man’s Search for Meaning, written by Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl. Frankl argued that human beings can endure unimaginable suffering if they know their purpose, if they can identify their “why.”

Rachel heard from survivors of the tunnels that Hersh had shared this lesson with them. When someone would falter, they would ask one another: “What’s your why?” For many it was simple: the family waiting for them at home. 

In this time of suffering, we too must ask ourselves: What is our why? 

For me, the answer comes from that preschool classroom. It is to find love amidst the void. 

Despite the torture she indured, Rachel offers a remarkable lesson in her memoir: 

“In Hebrew, the word for suffering is sevel. And the word for patience is savlanut. And the word for tolerance is sovlanut. The roots are all the same. Suffering, tolerance, and patience each grow from the same place. The same core. And though there's no linear path that I can discern, I do know I want to grow tolerance and patience so that I can bear the suffering, and do something else with it.” 

The cure for suffering is not anger or revenge. 

Human beings are capable of something extraordinary: an expansive, unending love. 

Rachel recounts meeting with the Pope during her tireless campaign to secure her son’s release. He told her that what Hersh was enduring and what she herself was withstanding was terrorism. Then he added: “Terrorism is the absence of humanity.”

It is this lesson that is so important to uphold. We must not let anti-Jewish hatred rob us of our humanity, not for the sake of others, but for our own sake. In the face of hate, there is nothing more powerful than choosing love. 

Perhaps that is what my preschool student understood all along. Before there was anything else—before fear, before grief, before suffering—God created love.

May we, like Rachel, find the strength to be God’s emissaries of love here on earth.  

The writing prompt that confronted me and my son, Lazar, as we were about to leave the Documentation Center at the Berlin Wall Memorial seemed innocuous enough: What about the situation faced by Berliners when the Wall went up in 1961—dividing the city, separating families, and prompting ever more desperate escape attempts from communist East Germany—still seemed relevant today?

Visitors were invited to scrawl their responses on little scraps of paper and clip them to strings hanging from the ceiling for all to see. 

But the more I thought about the question itself, the more troubling the answer appeared to be.

Lazar and I had flown from New York City to Berlin for spring break. Lazar loves visiting Europe—he’s a history major with a fondness for trains—and we both thought that a week spent sightseeing and riding the local rails would be a thrilling father-son adventure. Everyone we knew who’d been to Berlin raved about the city. 

We weren’t disappointed. Over the course of five days, we crisscrossed Berlin via U- and S-Bahn, took a high-speed train to Dresden, and gorged ourselves on currywurst, pretzels, and beer. But I’d be lying if I said that it all was just a carefree jaunt.

The afternoon we arrived, we strolled from our hotel to the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament. Hitler was appointed Chancellor there in 1933, and an arson attack just four weeks later was used as a pretext to suspend civil liberties and pave the way for the coming Nazi dictatorship. 

We continued on to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a collection of metal stelae that resembles a sprawling, slightly claustrophobic cemetery. Along the way, we encountered the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, which describes how the Nazis attempted to exterminate yet another ethnic group. We’d known that the Germans had persecuted the Romani people alongside Jews like ourselves during the war; but not to the extent revealed by the memorial, which presented the lives of various Sinti and Roma who were hunted by the Nazis in ways that seemed all too familiar. If we’d walked just a little further, we’d have passed the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism. 

The next day, we visited the Jewish Museum, which includes a series of floor-to-ceiling banners detailing every one of the hundreds of antisemitic proclamations issued from 1933 onwards. These proclamations served to tighten the noose around the necks of German Jews—Jews cannot join the civil service, cannot practice law, cannot receive public-school subsidies, cannot do this, cannot do that—until the only way they could leave the country legally was on a train bound for a ghetto in eastern Europe. We also spent some time at the Topography of Terror, a museum housed in the former Gestapo headquarters that explains how the Nazis developed the political and bureaucratic apparatus required to carry out Hitler’s agenda, from “euthanizing” the disabled (something that had nothing to do with relieving pain and suffering, and everything to do with murdering adults and children deemed unworthy of life) to sending millions to concentration camps. 

When people say that contemporary Germans have done an admirable job of confronting their past, they aren’t kidding. Their museums and memorials hold nothing back. 

The following day, we worked our way through a series of sites devoted to the German Democratic Republic, a totalitarian dystopia in which absolute conformity to the official state Marxist-Leninist ideology was required, neighbour informed on neighbour, and official propaganda portraying a workers’ paradise stood in stark contrast to the drab, oppressive reality of everyday life. 

As was the case with the WWII material we had encountered, Lazar and I were familiar with at least some of this sobering postwar history. But neither of us had seen Germany’s divided past presented in such excruciating detail, much of it through personal histories and eye-witness accounts. 

As a result, by the time we made it to the Berlin Wall Memorial, we were both ready for a stein of something sudsy. And that question about what seems relevant today—visitors were invited to write their answers on little slips of paper and suspend them from clips hanging from the ceiling—triggered a flood of disquieting thoughts and feelings.

The prompt was meant to address the situation in Berlin from 1961, when the Wall went up, to 1989, when it came down—a period that covers a lot of ground, from the height of the Cold War to the fall of the Soviet Union. But one display, which featured the videotaped testimony of people who had managed to slip from East to West Berlin despite the Wall, struck an especially resonant chord.

In one segment, a man who’d escaped in 1961 explained why he had chosen that particular moment to flee. After all, East Germany fell behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1940s, and there had been ample reason to relocate long before the Wall appeared. But as this man said, he only decided to leave when the freedom to do so was taken from him. Until that happened, he hadn’t felt the need.

This made me think of all those German Jews who stayed until escape was no longer possible. Before that happened, many must have asked themselves the same question over and over again: Should we get out now, or wait to see if it gets even worse? Leave too soon, and you risk uprooting yourself and your family before it’s absolutely necessary—when things could still return to normal, or at least get better. Wait too long, and you might not be able to get out at all.

It’s a question that I think many people in many parts of the world, including the United States, are probably asking themselves right now. My wife, my two sons, and I, all hold a couple of passports, and we have all wondered if we might need to use them if the political situation in the United States becomes intolerable. 

The most logical place to go would be Canada—I was born and raised in Montreal, and the boys and I are dual citizens—and we’ve talked about doing just that more than once over the past decade. 

But we’ve also all wondered what exactly “intolerable” would look like. As our younger son, Django, put it recently, the United States has already passed the point on the road to autocracy that Ingrid and I once thought would have justified moving north. What would it actually take for us to hit the eject button? More political violence? More attempts to cow the media and cozy up to white supremacists? More assaults on democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law? 

What is happening in America today is not the same as what happened in Germany during the run-up to World War II, nor is it the same as what happened during the establishment of Soviet-controlled East Germany. But the parallels are undeniable, and it makes me queasy. How did people back then determine whether—and when—to leave? And how many paid a terrible price for getting it wrong?

These are not rhetorical questions. I honestly don’t know how we are supposed to figure all this out; and for the remainder of our trip —in restaurants, on trains, wandering the city on foot—Lazar and I attempted to articulate what our personal thresholds might be without reaching any definitive conclusions. What would it take to persuade us to jump ship, leaving behind our lives as we know them? 

Drinking a beer by the Spree River and talking about these imponderables, a tour boat gliding lazily by, the sun dropping behind the neoclassical buildings surrounding us, I felt an acute sense of empathy for anyone who has ever faced a similar dilemma–and a profound sense of gratitude that I was able to freely discuss such questions with my son, even if neither of us had yet to find any clear answers.

I have always loved Passover—the smells, the sounds, the tastes. My favourite part is gathering my family around the table and leading the Seder. The magic of Passover lies in its domesticity. Each year, families and friends, including those who may not have practiced their Judaism all year, come together to tell the same story. 

For the past two years I have designed my own Haggadah, highlighting the elements I find most meaningful, omitting others, and peppering photos of past Passovers  throughout. 

Rabbi Yossi Klein Halevi teaches that there are two types of Jews: Purim Jews and Passover Jews. Passover Jews read the Haggadah and draw the moral lesson: “Love the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). Purim Jews read the Megillah and draw a different conclusion: The world is dangerous. We must be vigilant. 

I have always considered myself a Passover Jew. This year, after a frightening rise in antisemitism that saw Toronto synagogues shot into, an American preschool attacked, and a Belgian temple bombed, I am no longer sure. 

For the Seder I led, I did something different this time around. I created a series called Modern Moseses, a collection of stories for each of our 14 guests to read aloud. These stories featured a diverse range of Jews and non-Jews who had escaped or helped others escape modern slavery. 

They include Sithy Yi, who fled the Cambodian genocide as a child, helping her family survive starvation and mass killings under the Khmer Rouge only to be detained by ICE decades later; and Indigenous Canadian Bridget Perrier, who survived the child sex trade and has become an advocate against human trafficking in Toronto.

I also honour figures from the Holocaust: Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia; Irena Sendler, who smuggled 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto; Aleksander Pechersky, who organized a revolt at Sobibor extermination camp; and Mira Fuchrer, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

Later in the evening, we opened the door for Elijah, recalling historian Shalom Ben-Chorin’s assertion that medieval Jews did so, in part, to ensure an infant corpse had not been planted in their doorway as part of a blood libel. 

We closed the door, sang our concluding songs, and then, the doorbell rang. 

Three young men stood outside, having taken a few polite steps back to show they meant no harm. They were tourists, confused by Toronto’s arcane temporary permit system. My mom welcomed them in from the cold. We offered to print their permit and invited them to sit and share some flourless cake. 

“Where are you from?” I asked as I headed upstairs to fetch their document. 

“Germany.” 

I froze. Around the table, the Jews burst into uncontrollable laughter. 

“We are celebrating Passover,” my cousin Lior explained, pulling up three chairs for our guests. 

They didn’t recognize the word. 

“Where in Germany?” he asked. 

“Nuremberg,” one replied, “have you heard of it?” 

“As a matter of fact,” Lior said, “I have.”

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Some of us were curious, why this house? We were the only ones with lights on at 11 p.m., they explained. I found myself oddly comforted by the fact that my mother had always been too nervous to hang a mezuzah.  

I grew up attending Jewish day school and learned about the horrors of the Holocaust at a young age. I had the privilege of believing it could never happen again. I wondered whether Johannes, Tömas, and Felix had come by our house before 2023, if I would have found the moment as unsettling, or as darkly humorous, as I did now. I thought of my time in Berlin 11 years ago and the amazing people I met there. I never conflated them with the history I had studied. 

The ancient Israelites whose liberation we celebrate at Passover were not naive. They knew that survival required vigilance. And yet, as they fled Egypt, they welcomed Erev Rav—a “mixed multitude” of non-Israelites—into their midst. In other words, they were Passover and Purim Jews.

The philosopher Adi Ophir offers another interpretation of opening the door for Eliyahu. Like Ben-Chorin, he sees a darker history behind the ritual, but not one of fear. Rather, he understands it as defiance, a way for Jews to prove, to themselves and to others, that they were not afraid. 

We may have hesitated when our unexpected guests turned up at our door. But by the end of the night, everyone was eager to take a photo together. 

I am proud that we didn’t let fear override our Canadian-Jewish instinct to welcome the stranger.

“Who is honoured? One who honours others.”

— Pirkei Avot 4:15

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Across faiths and centuries, Moses and his legacy continue to shape our lives. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—faiths that honour Moses as a prophet—represent over 4.6 billion people, more than half of humanity. Not only is he one of the most revered prophets in the Torah but he is the most frequently mentioned prophet in the Quran. His teachings, along with the Ten Commandments he received on Mount Sinai, are also embraced by Christians. 

As a psychotherapist, CEO coach, and an author I have spent my life studying how embracing spirituality can lead to better leadership skills. I often look to Moses as an example of a truly inspiring leader—one who is identified as a humble servant, but still displays confidence and courage beyond measure. 

Moses is known as the greatest of our leaders, the humblest of men, all while still possessing the audacity, the holy “chutzpah,” to challenge God. Moses’s virtuousness is front and centre in our stories from the burning bush to the Exodus from Egypt. “Moshe Rabbeinu” means he is our teacher. We’ve followed him not just through the desert but through the example he set.

This is especially true during Shavuot, the celebration of receiving the Torah. At Har Sinai, arguably one of the most defining moments in Jewish history, Moses is our guiding hand, bridging heaven and earth. And yet, according to the Torah, nobody knows where Moses is buried. Our greatest of prophets, buried without fanfare as one last radical act of humility.

Like the Buddha, whose mother died shortly after birth, and many others who have risen to greatness, Moses too suffers early trauma when he is separated from his parents as a baby. For his own protection, Moses is given away and put on the Nile to be raised in the house of a domineering, abusive grandfather, the Pharaoh. Moses even famously begins his life with a speech impediment, despite going on to deliver some of the most moving words in the bible. 

But what I find the most unique about Moses is how he balances his leadership with utter egolessness. Despite being such a powerful figure, he still acts as the “Servant of God” (Exodus 14:31) and of his people first.

Yet when challenged by Korach, a power-hungry rival, Moses does not defend his authority but humbly replies, “In the morning the Lord will show who belongs to him . . . The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him” (Numbers 16:3-5). Rather than boasting about his role as God’s chosen messenger, Moses’s reaction is to ask, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Though Moses is known as the “Eved Hashem,” usually translated as “Servant of God,” the more literal translation of the phrase is the even stronger moniker, “Slave of God.”

Moses isn’t perfect, of course. He has his moments of despair, pleading with God, “The burden is too heavy for me. If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favour in Your sight—and do not let me see my wretchedness” (Numbers 11:15), yet nonetheless rises again. Later, he famously succumbs to his anger with the Jewish people, striking the rock in the desert meant to give them water, rather than obeying God by speaking to it (Numbers 20:11). Some say this is why Moses isn’t allowed to enter the Promised Land at the end of his life, but the Kabbalistic explanation is that if he had, it would have ushered in Messianic times (for which the world was not ready). Of course, in the time of the Messiah, Moses will reincarnate and finally be allowed to enter the Promised Land.

But, throughout the highs and lows, the victories and disappointments, Moses stays committed to the collective well-being, navigating unprecedented challenges with compassion and faith. He knows true leadership involves growth and humility in the face of one’s own limitations. That’s in part why he makes it to the ripe old age of 120, eyes bright and undimmed to his final days (Deuteronomy 34:7). This shows us that when we passionately engage with life, vibrancy and light can continue to flow through us, at any age.  

In modern leadership discourse, Moses’s qualities—confidence, compassion, humility, and service—are increasingly recognized as essential for success and greater fulfillment. Moses’s life story teaches us that we are capable of achieving far more than we might have ever believed. He teaches us that leadership is about staying grounded, and remaining devoted servants to truth and a purpose beyond oneself. His willingness to carry the burdens of his people, to intercede on their behalf, and to accept his own limitations, reflects a deep spiritual maturity that transcends mere authority. 

In a world, now hungrier than ever for enlightened, egoless leadership, Moses stands apart as a guiding light. May we all continue to learn from him, and be blessed to live to one hundred and beyond.

October brought us the long-anticipated second season of Netflix’s hit show Nobody Wants This. Last year, I wrote about my disappointment in the program’s portrayal of Jewish women. I wondered if season two would fare any better—and to my surprise, it did.

The show’s creator, Erin Foster, loosely based the series on her own life. The show explores the interfaith relationship of podcast host Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody). In season one, the non-Jewish women were portrayed as fun and carefree, while the Jewish women were nit-picky and irritating. That stereotypical portrayal received significant backlash, and it seems Foster heard the criticism loud and clear. 

The character of Esther (Jackie Tohn) who was happily-unhappily married to Rabbi Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons), undergoes a complete transformation. Her husband’s emotional affair jolts her into realizing she may not be as convivial as she once was. As she reconnects with her past self, she reclaims her independence and joy.

Last season, Esther was positioned in stark contrast to Joanne: naggy and explicitly “not fun,” while Joanne was effortlessly entertaining. In season two, we see Esther’s character go through a strong evolution. Her shifts range from the small—changing a dinner-party playlist from Solange to Ms. Lauryn Hill’s Doo Wop—to life-altering, like asking Sasha for a separation. Doo Wop may be Lauryn Hill’s trendiest song and Sasha may be a loveable oaf, but by pursuing her own bliss, Esther is freed from the confines of the Jewish American Princess stereotype and becomes far more dynamic (even if the romantic in me hopes she ends up back with Sasha). 

Rabbi Noah’s ex-girlfriend, Rebecca, is finally humanized. When the pair meet for a relationship post-mortem, we learn that Noah had been leading her on by naming their imagined future children, calling her his “forever family,” and even planning a trip to Portugal two weeks before calling it quits. Where season one painted Rebecca as erratic and manipulative, season two reframes her shock and anger as justified. It is unclear whether this reversal was engineered in response to critics or part of Foster’s long game. Perhaps I should have been more patient. 

In Judaism, it is never too late to make things right. Just over two months ago, we gathered for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In its second season, Nobody Wants This performs a kind of teshuvah, a rehumanizing act of moral repair. 

Rabbi Noah’s mother, Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), does not receive the same character reversal, remaining firmly opposed to Joanne. In episode two, she appears to soften when she sees her son’s girlfriend encouraging him to embrace his emotions. But the moment is short-lived. When a friend comments that the couple is “really tied together,” Bina claps back, “And I’ve got the scissors.” As in the previous season, Joanne’s relationship with her prospective mother-in-law takes one step forward and two giant steps back. 

But perhaps this storyline is holding up an uncomfortable mirror. Maybe we, as Jews, need to be more honest about how we treat outsiders. If Foster wrote Bina based on her own experience marrying into a Jewish family, then perhaps we should take that portrayal seriously and examine how we can be more welcoming, as our tradition so often instructs. 

We do get glimpses of Bina’s capacity for kindness. She comforts Joanne’s despondent sister, offering the wise insight that “if you are hurt by what [a] person said . . . it is because you think these things are true.” Bina is not inherently cruel; she is afraid. Her son’s relationship with a non-Jew threatens her, and she is not alone. For generations, Jews have worried that intermariage would dilute an already small population. I will never forget a fellow Birthright participant yelling at me from across a hotel conference room that her grandparents hadn’t survived the Holocaust for my parents to intermarry. This fear runs deep. Yet a 2021 Pew Study found that “the offspring of intermarriages have become increasingly likely to identify as Jewish in adulthood.” The data suggests that intermarriage is not erasing us. In many cases, like my own family, Jewish identity emerges stronger.  

Rabbi Noah experiences his own reckoning when he loses out on a promotion due to his interfaith relationship with Joanne. He’d been gunning for the senior rabbi position for years. Unhappy in the shadow of Senior Rabbi “Big Noah” (yes, they’re both named Noah), he leaves in search of a new spiritual home. He is soon hired by what seems to be a Humanistic congregation called Ahava. 

Unfortunately, that is where the show makes its most glaring religious misstep. During Rabbi Noah’s job interview, Senior Rabbi Neil (Seth Rogan) praises him for a Tu B’Shvat sermon that “completely changed the way [Neil] mourned.” I was momentarily confused as Tu B’Shvat celebrates the environment and has nothing to do with mourning, until I realized he meant Tisha B’Av, the sombre day marking the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. It is an understandable mistake for a layperson, but not a rabbi, no matter how atheist. Perhaps Rogen was improvising, as he’s known to do, but it’s disappointing that a show about a rabbi didn’t have anyone on set to catch the error. (Erin Foster, if you’re looking to hire a clergy consultant, I’m available!)  

Later that episode, Noah wishes his Purim party guests “mazel” (luck) instead of “chag sameach” (happy holiday). It’s a small slip, but a telling one: mazel isn’t a catch-all Yiddish term Jews toss around at random. A little input from a Jewish professional would have gone a long way. 

Still, the show redeems itself beautifully in the final episode. As Noah and Joanne contemplate breaking up, a quintessential rom-com montage unfolds. Noah relives his favourite moments with Joanne, while she recalls her favourite experiences with Judaism—lighting Shabbat candles, dressing up for Purim, eating challah (that one’s easy; it’s objectively the world’s best bread), and watching Noah’s sermons. I teared up, moved by the beauty of Jewish life. 

In the end, season two of Nobody Wants This repairs its earlier caricatures of Jewish women with tenderness and nuance, and continues its landmark celebration of Jewish joy. 

Maybe season three will have all that and accurate Judaism.

Jordi Mand is a Jewish Canadian playwright who has collaborated with the biggest theatre companies in Canada, including Stratford Festival, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Grand Theatre, Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, and more. Her work has been published into multiple languages, and produced both nationally and internationally.

One of Mand’s most celebrated plays, In Seven Days, was a co-production between The Grand Theatre and the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company. NOW Magazine wrote that it is “beautifully penned,” and it has been described as a “poignant, timely, and deeply funny” play by the Canadian Play Outlet. 

Not just a playwright, Mand is also a trained actor and has experience writing for television, but this year she is venturing into new territory—the world of film. She’s currently adapting her show In Seven Days into a film, and recently pitched the project at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival’s first Filmmaker Showcase in early June. The showcase allowed pre-selected filmmakers to pitch their projects to a jury to attain sought-after exposure and a pass for the 2027 edition of the festival. Mand’s pitch wowed the judges, tying for first place at the showcase.

Mand has had a busy couple of weeks following the pitch, so I corresponded with her over email to discuss her writing, the Filmmaker Showcase, and her plans for adapting In Seven Days.
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Jordi, it’s so lovely to talk with you. Congratulations on the success of your pitch! Can you share a bit about your play In Seven Days and where the idea came from to adapt it into a film?

Of course! In the play, 30-year-old Rachel arrives at her father's house for Shabbat dinner expecting an ordinary evening with family. Instead, her father Sam—a beloved lawyer and pillar of his Jewish community—makes an announcement that changes everything. After years of living with cancer and chronic pain, he has decided to pursue Medical Assistance in Dying. And he's going to do it in seven days.

Determined to change his mind, Rachel throws herself into a battle she is almost certainly going to lose. Standing opposite her is Shelley, Sam's devoted partner and caregiver, whose years of sacrifice have created a complicated and often combative relationship with Rachel. Caught in the middle is Eli, Sam's oldest friend and rabbi, who believes what Sam is planning is fundamentally wrong, but loves him too much to walk away.

Over the course of the next week, old wounds are reopened, long-held secrets are revealed, and an entire community finds itself pulled into a deeply personal decision. Family members argue, friends take sides, and debates about faith, autonomy, love, and even the superiority of sesame seed versus poppy seed bagels erupt around the dinner table.

As the clock counts down toward Sam's final day, the people who love him most are forced to confront an impossible question: What happens when someone you love makes a choice you cannot accept? In Seven Days is ultimately not a play about death. It's a comedy about living; about family, faith, forgiveness, and the messy, beautiful challenge of saying goodbye.

Based on audience and media feedback, adapting the play into a film feels like a natural next step. The play generated such powerful conversations that I began to feel the story deserved the opportunity to reach a much wider audience.

How long did the play run, and what was the audience reception like?

In Seven Days premiered in 2024 as a co-production between the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario and the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company in Toronto. Both six-week runs sold out, and the piece went on to win the Carol Bolt Award for Best New Play, one of Canada's most prestigious honours for new work. It was also selected to be part of CBC’s PlayMe Podcast, where they did an audio recording of the play with the original cast.

But what meant the most to me was the audience response. Following performances, people stayed for hours sharing their own experiences with illness, caregiving, loss, and MAID. I've never had that level of engagement with any other project I've written. It was unbelievably moving.

Can you share what the process was like for the Filmmaker Showcase? When did you submit your project as a pitch and was it selected from an initial round of submissions?

The process began with a written application and project submission. From there, a small group of filmmakers was selected to participate in the live pitching event at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Once selected, we were given the opportunity to present our projects in front of a panel of industry professionals and an audience. It was an incredible experience. Not only because of the opportunity to pitch In Seven Days, but because of the calibre of the projects and filmmakers involved. I left feeling inspired by the breadth of stories being told and the passion behind them. The event created a wonderful sense of community and reminded me how many exciting, thoughtful, and diverse Jewish stories are being developed right now.‍

Your pitch tied with another project, Solitaire, so huge congratulations again. What was the outcome of winning this pitch?

Thank you! First of all, congratulations to the Solitaire team as well. It's a terrific project and the artists working on it are amazing.

The outcome was a combination of recognition, industry exposure, and additional support as we continue developing the film. Perhaps most importantly, it provided validation that the story resonates beyond theatre audiences. It reinforced my belief that there is a real appetite for this conversation and for contemporary Jewish stories that tackle complex issues.
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What was your process like preparing for the live pitch?

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the pitch was really about. At first, I approached it the way many writers do—talking about the plot, the themes, and the production history. But eventually I realized the most important thing wasn't the play itself. It was why I wrote it. Once I started talking about my father, his childhood friend Harold, and the conversation I had with my brother, everything clicked into place. In Seven Days isn't really a story about MAID; it's a story about family and about love. I wanted the audience to understand that this wasn't a political project for me. It came from a deeply personal place, and I think that's ultimately what people connected with.


During your pitch, you spoke a bit about how the play was inspired by real life events and conversations that you had had. Can you share that here?

Growing up in North York, Ontario, my dad had a best friend named Harold. They were inseparable. As they grew up life took them in different directions, and eventually they lost touch.

Fast forward 50 years: my parents decided to move to London, Ontario without knowing anyone. So they did what any good Jews do . . .  they joined a synagogue. When they arrived for Rosh Hashanah services, they started playing Jewish Geography. Someone mentioned that the president was from North York, and it was Harold! My dad and Harold basically picked up where they left off.

But Harold was very sick. He was battling multiple illnesses, and lived with constant pain. One night, he announced to my parents that he qualified for MAID and had decided to go through with it.

Even though MAID is legal in Canada, in most sectors of Judaism it is considered forbidden. And Harold’s decision became the subject of endless debate. Friends, family members, congregants, everyone had an opinion.

I went to visit my parents in London while all of this was happening, and I came back to Toronto and saw my younger brother, relaying everything that was happening with Harold. He said, “I think going through MAID is one of the most selfish things you could do.” And I responded, “Zach, if dad (who we both love and adore) was sick enough to qualify, you’re telling me you wouldn’t support him?” He would not. I was stunned.

I am a cancer survivor. I am no stranger to the hospital or the medical world. So, I understand why someone who qualifies for MAID would want to go through with it. But any time two people have two wildly different opinions about something, to me, you have a piece of art. So, after we had that conversation and my brother drove away, I sat down and started writing my play, In Seven Days.


There are some really complex themes that you wrestle with in this story. At the heart of this project, we see characters grappling with Judaism and their feelings towards medically assisted death. Has working through this from a fictional standpoint affected conversations that you have in your own life and community?

Absolutely. Writing the play required me to approach every character with empathy and curiosity rather than judgment, and to spend time genuinely trying to understand people whose views I might not share. What surprised me most, though, was what happened after the play opened. Night after night, people approached me and trusted me with deeply personal stories. Some had gone through similar experiences themselves, and others were supporting loved ones through it. Many were still wrestling with difficult questions and didn’t know where they landed. I don’t think In Seven Days offers answers. What it offers is space for people to ask difficult questions together, and I've come to believe that can be just as valuable.

Do Jewish themes show up in much of your writing, or is In Seven Days an outlier in that way?

Jewish themes appear throughout much of my work, although not always in overt ways. I’m consistently drawn to stories about family, community, tradition, debate, humour, guilt, and the tension between individual desires and collective responsibility. Those are deeply Jewish ideas, whether the characters are explicitly Jewish or not. In Seven Days is certainly my most overtly Jewish work to date, but in many ways, it feels like a natural extension of questions I’ve been exploring throughout my career.

For example, my upcoming play The Cut, which will premiere in Toronto and Winnipeg in the fall of 2026, follows an interfaith couple struggling to decide whether or not to circumcise their unborn son. On the surface, it's a play about circumcision. But underneath, it’s really about identity, inheritance, marriage, parenthood, and what we choose to pass on to the next generation. Much like In Seven Days, it takes a specifically Jewish question and uses it as a doorway into a much larger human conversation.

That’s what interests me most as a writer. I love stories that are deeply rooted in Jewish life and culture, but that ultimately speak to universal experiences. The more specific a story becomes, the more audiences often see themselves in it.

I love that so much. And you’ve phrased it so well. What is the timeline like for a project of this scope—how much have you thought about the production process and when will you begin filming?

We’re currently in the development phase. I’ve completed a first draft of the screenplay, and we’re actively pursuing funding opportunities. Film development takes time, particularly for independent Canadian projects, so we're focused on building the strongest possible foundation. Right now, our priority is development, financing, and assembling the right creative team.

How are you planning to navigate casting? Are you considering prioritizing casting Jewish actors?

For me, casting always begins with finding the best actor for the role. That said, Jewish identity is an important part of this story, and authenticity matters. Those conversations are something we’ll be having throughout the casting process. I’m very interested in creating opportunities for Jewish performers and ensuring the world of the film feels truthful and lived-in. Ultimately, my goal is to assemble an ensemble cast capable of delivering the humour, vulnerability, and emotional complexity that audiences connected with in the play.

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If you’d like to engage with the play before the film adaption makes its way into the world, here’s how you can read about it or see it: 

• The play was published by Scirocco Drama and is available for purchase here: https://www.jgshillingford.com/product/in-seven-days/

• PlayMe also did an interview with Mand about the play that you can listen to here:https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/211-playme/episode/16139230-in-seven-days-interview-with-jordi-mand

As Niv begins their hiatus, we are all in need of some good books and I am thrilled to share some of my favourite books to get us through this Niv drought—and just in time for summer! As a lifelong reader, narrowing my all time favourite books to just 10 was tough, but I focused on books that made a strong impact on me long after I finished them, as well as titles that span a wide range of genres, time periods, and backgrounds. Enjoy the long, sunny days ahead by laying out with one of these gems (presented in no particular order).  

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Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Melissa Broder (I raved about her novel Death Valley in my best books of 2023 round up), and while I have been a devoted fan going back to her first novel The Pisces, Milk Fed is the one that turned my infatuation into a longterm love. Milk Fed features Rachel, a secular Jewish woman who falls for Miriam, an Orthodox woman working at her family’s frozen yogurt shop. Through this relationship, as well as some trippy dream sequences—like a human-sized dancing loaf of challah and hallucinations of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel—Rachel explores her eating disorder, her issues with her mother, her relationship with Judaism, and her queerness. I view Rachel’s journey as a queer Jewish journey to self-love and acceptance. There’s a lot going on in this book, but if these themes resonate, I recommend you give it a shot.

Oak Flat by Lauren Redniss

Oak Flat is an illustrated, well-researched look at the Native American Western Apache’s fight for Oak Flat, their religious site in Arizona. The book examines how capitalism seeks to damage Indigenous rights throughout the country, the mining rights that have been fought in this area for decades, and the religious importance of the site to the Apache. The story is told through the perspective of the Nosie family, who have spent years of their life fighting for their freedom of religion on this issue. This book completely shaped how I see Indigenous rights and how Indigenous communities must continue to fight for their rights. As a Jewish person, it reminded me how important it is that we defend other religions and cultures when their right to practice is threatened. While the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case last year, the fight for Oak Flat continues, but time is running out.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

While the book is a well known classic, anyone who hasn’t read this book is in for a treat. Jane is an orphan in 1840s England who must find her way in the world without the support of family. She faces tremendous loss before taking a job as a governess at Thornfield Hall, owned by the broody Mr. Rochester. While this book is viewed as a classic romance novel, it is famously known for the independence of its protagonist. Her staunch morality and belief in her self-worth made this incredibly influential for me as an 18-year-old, and it has remained so as I’ve gotten older. There are valid criticisms of this novel, largely the dismissal of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, and so I highly recommend pairing Jane Eyre with the post-colonial prequel novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, to help interrogate those critiques. However, despite its limited,1840s English perspective, it remains a classic, and features an empathetic protagonist who can be admired for her strength. 

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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

If you’re looking for a sprawling epic to devour on a summer vacation, this is a good option. Pachinko follows a family from 1910s Korea through the 20th century to 1980s New York, featuring a wide cast of characters. It begins in Korea right on the brink of Japanese annexation, when a woman named Sunja gets pregnant out of wedlock from her abusive lover Hansu. After she confesses to one of her family’s lodgers, Isak, that she’s pregnant, the infirm Christian minister marries her, enabling her to go to Japan to live with his family. The rest of the novel traces the impact of this decision, from the way Koreans are treated in Japan to the struggle of being an immigrant in Korea, and later the United States. I learned so much about Japanese colonialism, something I didn’t learn much about in school or university. Pachinko is a moving depiction of family dynamics and the impact one decision can have on countless future generations.

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The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft

The Books of Jacob won Olga Tokarczuk the Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s a thousand page exploration of 18th century Europe, mostly in what is now Poland. It is told through the eyes of many characters who meet the titular Jacob Frank. Frank, a real historical figure, was a Jewish man who claimed to be the messiah, spawning his own religion later called Frankism, which actually became closely aligned with Catholicism. Frank travelled throughout Europe and the Ottoman Empire spreading his religion and making allies (and enemies), with both Jewish and non-Jewish followers. Tokarczuk is Polish, notably not Jewish, and has made her career in writing about everyday people, often with a feminist bent. The Books of Jacob, with its sweeping and heavily researched historical context, didn’t seem to be in Tokarczuk’s wheelhouse at first. The real power of this novel, and the reason Tokarczuk wanted to write it, was to show that Poland has always been a richly multicultural society, with centuries of Jewish history as well as ample trade and communication with other nations and empires, including the Ottoman Empire. The far-right party in Poland did not like Tokarczuk’s book, and he ended up receiving death threats needing round the clock security protection. Today, it’s important to remember that history isn’t as far back in the past as we might think. Tokarczuk uncovered an almost forgotten aspect of European history, and reminded us that humans have always shared thoughts, ideas, and patterns of movement.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

This is an underrated classic, written in the 1940s. It follows a young man, Charles Ryderm and his friends, siblings Sebastian and Julia Flyte, from Oxford to World War II. Sebastian and Charles become fast friends at Oxford, and Charles envies Sebastian’s wealth and status in the aristocracy, while also being curious about his family’s Catholicism. There remains a debate about whether their relationship is platonic or romantic, but at the very least, it is absolutely homoerotic. Sebastian’s heavy drinking and depression keeps getting worse, and Charles is alienated from the family for many years, eventually reconnecting and briefly having a relationship with Sebastian’s sister Julia. This book is less about what happens, and more about how it is written. The prose is ornate, with beautifully descriptive passages and evocative scenes that still linger in my mind years after my last re-read. It is ostensibly a book about Catholicism and class, but to me it is a book about youth, those vibrant days in your 20s that feel they will go on forever, and what it means to look back at them when they are long past. Waugh’s prose is indulgent, and in my opinion, doesn’t get the flowers it deserves.

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You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue
While I already wrote about this book in my Best Books of 2024 article for Niv, its impact on me has remained over the years, and I’ve given copies to friends ahead of their trips to Mexico City. Prolific Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue’s irreverent and creative reimagining of Cortes’s conquest of Moctezuma’s empire in modern day Mexico City is trippy but well-researched and grounded in reality. The ending is satisfyingly anti-colonialist but also devastating because it exposes what could’ve been. The power of this book rests in the slow dismantling of the Spanish; the defiance of hegemonic power is subtle but effective. With a sprawling and diverse cast, Enrigue is able to showcase a range of perspectives on Spanish colonialism in Mexico, as well as the many fates of people during that period. 

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

The second novel by popular Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom follows Gifty, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants as she gets her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Stanford while helping her mother deal with her debilitating depression. Throughout the novel, we see why Gifty’s mother is so depressed, as her husband suddenly leaves for Ghana and she experiences the loss of a child. Throughout the book, Gifty is also struggling with her Christianity. I related to Gifty wrestling with her faith, and what it means to be religious in an environment where it’s viewed as an anomaly. It’s a moving look at a family that has been dealt a difficult hand, with very human characters and a sympathetic struggle to keep going.

Making Love with the Land by Joshua Whitehead

Throughout this genre-bending book, filled with essays in various formats, Whitehead explores his relationship with the Canadian prairie, as well as what it means to be Indigenous in the modern world while maintaining a relationship with the natural world. Whitehead also discusses the connection between faith and place, his experiences with grief, what it means to be queer and Indigenous, and the struggles he’s had finding his identity and maintaining relationships throughout his life. Some parts of the book are written in English, while others are in Cree, and Whitehead plays with language in the way only a poet could. This book reminds me of the hardest parts of being human, which are so often also the best. 

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Autofiction is not for everyone, but Sheila Heti does it exceptionally, including in this novel. Motherhood is about an unnamed female narrator, based on Heti, in her 30s who is grappling with the decision on whether or not to have children. The narrator is unreliable at times, but in the way that we are all often unreliable when we filter our thoughts and decisions through our own brains. Through this narrator, Heti explores her complicated relationship with motherhood, including her family history, her struggles with her body, and the pressures on Jewish women to have children. Torah metaphors, particularly that of Jacob wrestling with the angel, and the literary device of I Ching, a Chinese divination tool, colour the book’s pages. I Ching helps our narrator as she weighs her options about motherhood. It’s an honest, unflinching, occasionally hard to witness examination of modern women and the pressures society puts on them to have children. 

When I heard that Niv was taking a year-long break, I felt compelled to think about a year’s worth of recipes in the context of the Jewish calendar.

The Jewish calendar holds many traditions that I love, such as the mini celebrations of Rosh Chodesh at the start of every month. The calendar also keeps us on our toes every year when we plan around the High Holidays that always fall on different dates.

And these characteristics are part of its charm, inspiring me to write about them in my cookbook 52 Shabbats: Friday Night Dinners Inspired by a Global Kitchen.

Below are three recipes that go well with different holidays but also can be used for other festivities and year-round Shabbat dinners. All are adapted from 52 Shabbats: Friday Night Dinners Inspired by a Global Jewish Kitchen.

I look forward to bringing you new recipes when Niv returns.

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Fish in Spicy H’raimi-Style Tomato Sauce (and a Tofu Variation)

Serves 4–6 as a main course, or 8–10 as a starter

I feature this recipe in the Fall chapter of my cookbook, and it is a wonderful choice if you’re looking for meals full of flavour and spice. Fish are symbolic of good luck and innocence, which is fitting for the High Holidays and later in the year for Adar (the month of Purim). Also this stew, inspired by North African recipes, is just as delicious as a starter or main. It is even tasty when chilled, making it a perfect summer dish as well.

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Ingredients: 

2 tablespoons olive oil

1.5 cups chopped onion

2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic

2 to 3 teaspoons seeded, finely chopped fresh jalapeños or serrano chiles (see Note)

1.5 teaspoons paprika or hot (sharp) paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground caraway, optional

1/2 teaspoon salt

1.5 cups (1/4-inch slices) carrots

1.5 cups chopped red bell pepper

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes, or 1 (14.5-ounce) can of chopped tomatoes with juices

1.5 cups water

1.5 pounds cod, halibut, sea bass or other mild, firm-fleshed fish fillets, any bones removed

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley, divided

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or a large, deep skillet with a lid over medium-high heat. 
2. Add the onion and sauté until softened and starting to brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until golden for 1 to 2 minutes. 
3. Add the jalapeños (2 teaspoons for a milder dish, 3 for a spicier one) and sauté for 1 minute. Add the paprika, cumin, caraway (if using), salt, carrots, and bell peppers and sauté for 1 minute. 
4. Add the tomato paste, lemon juice, tomatoes with their juices, and water. Stir well and bring the mixture to a simmer. Lower the heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables have begun to soften, for about 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Cut the fish into smaller than bite-size pieces or bigger portions, depending on whether you are serving it as a first course or a main dish.
6. Nestle the fish pieces into the sauce in the Dutch oven and spoon some of the sauce over the top. Cover, return to a simmer, and cook until the fish is just cooked through, for about 10 to 20 minutes. (The timing will vary depending on type and thickness of the fish.) 
7. The fish is done when it flakes when cut at the thickest point and is no longer translucent—it should still be very moist. The fish is cooked when an instant read thermometer in the thickest part of the fillet reads 145° Fahrenheit.
8. Remove the fish from the sauce and transfer to a rimmed serving plate. Cover with aluminum foil to keep warm.
9. Return the sauce to a simmer and cook over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes until the sauce has reduced by half. Taste and add more salt and/or paprika, if desired. 
10. Stir in half the cilantro and cook for 1 minute. Ladle the sauce over the fish and garnish with the remaining cilantro.

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NOTE: Serve the fish and sauce warm, at room temperature, or cold. If using cold, taste again before serving and add more salt if needed. Traditionally, red chiles are used in this dish, but green jalapeños or serranos work well. Red versions are riper and hotter.

VARIATION: You can substitute the fish with firm tofu. Just make sure to firmly press the tofu to remove excess water (you can place the tofu in a paper towel or a kitchen towel and put a weight on top of a plate to press the tofu). Cut the tofu into 2-inch wide slices and add it to the sauce. Cook the tofu in the sauce for 10 to 15 minutes.

MAKE IT IN ADVANCE: The recipe can be made up to two days in advance. Store the fish or tofu in the sauce in an airtight container and refrigerate.

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Challah Fritters with Jam and Hot Fudge Sauce

Makes About 40 Fritters

This fried dessert was designed for Hanukkah, but it truly is good all year (well maybe not Passover!). This recipe is perfect for using up leftover or day-old challah. 

Ingredients: 

1 loaf of plain challah
4 large eggs, beaten
1 cup milk or unsweetened non-dairy milk 

1 cup seedless fruit preserves or jam (I recommend strawberry or raspberry)
Vegetable or other oil for frying
Confectioners’ sugar and/or ground cinnamon
Homemade or purchased hot fudge or chocolate sauce, warmed (optional)

Directions

1. Shred the challah into 1/4-inch pieces and place them in a large bowl. 
2. In a separate large bowl, mix the eggs, milk, and jam. Add the shredded challah and stir until well combined. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Stir well. 
3. Wet your hands. Using your hands, roll about 1 tablespoon of batter into a ball. Press it together firmly and roll it again, squeezing to compact it into a firm ball about 1 inch in diameter. Place it on a plate. Repeat with the remaining batter. 
4. In a 12-inch wide, heavy pot, heat 1/2 inch of oil over high heat to 350° Fahrenheit (for best results, use a deep-fry or candy thermometer, but the oil is ready when a bit of fritter batter bubbles as soon as it is added to the pan). Line a large plate with paper towels. 
5. Roll the fritters between your hands to make sure they are compact, then gently roll them off your hand and into the hot oil until you have 8 to 10 in the pot, being careful not to crowd the pan. 
6. Adjust the heat as needed to maintain the proper temperature and prevent burning and cook until the bottoms of the fritters are dark golden brown for about 2 to 3 minutes. 
7. Flip the fritters with a slotted metal spoon or tongs and cook until the other side is browned for about 1 to 2 minutes. 
8. Transfer the fritters to the prepared plate using tongs or a slotted spoon. Add oil as needed and be sure to return the oil to the proper temperature between batches. (If desired, keep the fritters warm in a 250° Fahrenheit oven on an ungreased baking sheet.) 
9. Sprinkle the fritters with confectioners’ sugar and/or cinnamon and serve with warmed chocolate or fudge sauce (if using), on the side for dipping. 

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MAKE IT IN ADVANCE: The fritters can be made one day in advance, stored in an airtight container at room temperature. 

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Grilled Lamb Chops with Bitter Herbs Salad 

Serves 6

While lamb and roasted meats are not a custom for Ashkenazi Seders (although permissible the rest of the holiday) they are an important part of Mizrahi and Sephardic ones. The salad is based on a custom from Egyptian Karaite Jews, who eat a mix of bitter herbs as part of the Seder ritual. 

Make these lamb chops or salad together or by themselves anytime. Toasted pita pieces are a good substitute for the matzah when not observing Passover. You will always find a jar of the Whole Lemon Dressing and a container of Garlic Sauce in my refrigerator. They are very versatile!

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Grilled Lamb

Ingredients: 

3 pounds bone-in lamb rib or shoulder chops

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 cup minced fresh mint

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1/4 cup Garlic Sauce (see below) and/or purchased pomegranate molasses, optional

Directions

1. Trim any excess fat from the lamb chops. In a small bowl, mix the lemon juice, olive oil, cinnamon, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, mint, and garlic. 
2. Rub the mixture all over the lamb, cover, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 1 day. Bring the lamb to room temperature before grilling.
3. Prepare a grill for medium-high to high heat. Grill the lamb chops, turning occasionally, about 5 minutes per side, or until cooked to the desired doneness.
4. Lamb will keep cooking for several minutes after being pulled from the grill, so it’s best to slightly undercook. 
5. Transfer the lamb to a plate and cover with aluminum foil. Let it rest 5–10 minutes before serving.

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Bitter Herbs Salad 

Ingredients: 

3/4 cup (1-inch pieces) chopped fennel

2 tablespoons minced fennel fronds

1 cup (1-inch pieces) endive

2 cups (1-inch pieces) romaine lettuce

2 cups (1-inch pieces) chopped red leaf lettuce

1 cup (1-inch pieces) frisée or arugula

1/2 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley

1/2 cup minced fresh dill

About 1/2 cup Whole Lemon Dressing (see below)

3 sheets matzo broken into 1-inch pieces

1/4 cup chopped fresh mint or flat-leaf parsley

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix the fennel, fennel fronds, endive, romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, frisée, parsley, and dill.
2. Just before serving, shake up the dressing, pour it over the salad, and toss until evenly coated. Add more dressing if desired. Add the matzo pieces and toss again.

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Whole Lemon Dressing

Makes about 1.25 cups

Ingredients: 

2 small lemons, scrubbed

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper 

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons water

Directions

1. Grate the zest from the lemons and place the zest in a jar with a lid. Cut away the white pith from the lemons and discard. Chop the lemon flesh into 1/4-inch pieces and add to the jar. 
2. Add the garlic, salt, black pepper, cayenne, olive oil, lemon juice, and water. Seal the lid and shake until combined. 
3. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if desired. 
4. The dressing can be made up to 3 days in advance and kept airtight in the refrigerator. Stir or shake well before using.

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Garlic Sauce

Makes about 1 Cup

This lemony garlic sauce is inspired by toum, a creamy Lebanese staple. It’s for garlic lovers. It makes a nice non-dairy alternative for a creamy garnish or even an aioli-style dip for crudites.

Ingredients: 

1/3 cup peeled garlic cloves

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a blender, combine the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and purée on high speed until smooth. 
2. For a thicker (and stronger) sauce, add more garlic. 
3. For a thinner and milder one, add more oil. The sauce can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Bring to room temperature before using.

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TO SERVE:

Transfer the lamb to individual plates and drizzle with Garlic Sauce (if using). Garnish with fresh mint. Serve with the bitter herbs salad on the side.

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company is ending their 2025–2026 season with a crowd pleaser: Fiddler on the Roof.

But this version of Fiddler is special because it’s all in Yiddish (with English and Russian subtitles). First premiering in 2018 in New York, the off-broadway show was a knock-out; garnering praise from Jewish and non-Jewish critics.

The revival will reunite many members of the same creative team that helmed the off-Broadway production. The show will be directed by Tony and Academy Award winner Joel Grey, and Broadway veteran and Tony nominee Steven Skybell will star as Tevye, leading an all Canadian cast. The show runs from May 25 to June 7 at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto.

I sat down with David Eisner, co-artistic director of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company to discuss the important legacy of the musical and why the Yiddish rendition will resonate with audience members.

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There's so much anticipation for this Fiddler production. It’s beloved in the community. When coming up with the new season, why did you decide on having an all Yiddish version of Fiddler?

The answer to that starts probably about three or four years back when we heard it was happening in New York, and there was the possibility of a tour. Avery Saltzman (co-director of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company) and I pride ourselves in telling and sharing Jewish stories from different angles. To tell the story of Fiddler on the Roof in the authentic language of the characters we thought would be something special, and when we saw it in New York we were over the moon. My parents spoke Yiddish. And involuntarily, and this happens to many people, when you start hearing the violinist play and then the first words are said you get emotional because it's so authentic and real. Avery and I, and our general manager, Matt, went to see it and became convinced we wanted to do it.

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How did it land all these years later in Toronto?

The tour fell apart because it was so expensive. And then we said, “you know what, why don't we try to put it on ourselves for our 18th season?” We would do the production with Steven Skybell who played Tevye, who’s reprised the role numerous times; it’s in his bones. We have the whole creative team from New York. Directed by the legendary Joel Gray, as well as the artistic director, Zalmen Mlotek, and others. They all came up to Canada to replicate the show but with a Canadian cast. We ended up with a remarkable cast. Approximately half are Jewish and half aren't.

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Will this production tour Canada or is it  only showing at the Elgin Theatre?

This will be the only production. It’ll be on for two weeks but we have over 20,000 seats that we can sell. So far, we’ve received and are getting groups from Buffalo, from London, Ontario, as well as the rest of Ontario and Western New York. We're excited.

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Can you tell me the importance of having this all-Canadian cast?

Well, it's a little known secret, but Canadian performers are some of the best in the world. I mean, you go to New York and you see Broadway and we’re as good if not better. The creative team couldn’t believe the talent pool that we had to pick from here. We were thrilled that they were happy and that it will be an all-Canadian cast.

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More generally, how do you decide what you’d like to have in a season?

Avery and I look at a few touch points to hit for every season. We want to do potentially a comedy, a drama. We like to add music. We want to incorporate an element of the Holocaust, not for the whole season, but for a show. Something where there’s an homage to the past and some new Canadian world premieres. That will make up a season. And our next season has all of that in spades. So we’re thrilled that people are coming to Fiddler. We hope people will stay on this journey and be enriched with Jewish stories and become subscribers.

That’s our goal because we were hit hard, like every theatre, during the pandemic. We had close to 2,500 subscribers. And then we were half of that, but we’ve been slowly growing. We’re taking a big swing with this production, but it’s an important show. It’s the biggest title in the canon of Jewish theatre. We wanted to do this for our 18th year.

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What are you hoping audiences take away from this rendition of Fiddler?

In these times, there’s a pride in acknowledging the resilience of the characters in the play. The play’s central theme is tradition. When I think of being Jewish, it’s religion and culture. And the culture part, it’s important to energize the Jewish soul. We can do that by entertaining, educating, and bringing the fire to the Jewish soul with some of the work. But in general, I would love the audience to be wonderfully entertained and just enjoy something memorable that will stay with them for a long, long time.

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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Spring arrived March 20 on the secular calendar but on the Hebrew calendar it arrived two days earlier with the start of Nissan. Nothing reminds me more of spring than this creamy green sauce, which resembles the colour of fresh grass, a symbolic moment of renewal. The recipe can be used as a dip, a sauce, or as the base for a salad dressing. 
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The first weeks of Nissan are traditionally spent preparing for Passover, which began the evening of April 1. Spring Green Garlic and Avocado Sauce is a perfect seasonal lift to a holiday menu, or for any occasion.

Spring Green Garlic and Avocado Sauce

Makes about 1 1/2 cups sauce

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Ingredients

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus as needed

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, plus as needed

2–4 tablespoons peeled garlic cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt, plus as needed

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, plus as needed

3 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons chopped mint

3 tablespoons chopped basil

1/4 cup chopped green onion (use white and green parts)

1 cup very ripe avocado, mashed

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Directions

1. Place oil, juice, garlic (use 2 tablespoons for a garlic bite, 4 tablespoons for a wallop), salt, pepper, parsley, mint, basil, and onion into a blender. 
2. Process on high until smooth, stopping and scraping down sides as needed. 
3. Add avocado in batches and blend until smooth. 
4. Taste and adjust seasoning by adding oil, juice, salt or pepper as needed.

Serve as a dip with artichokes or crudites, as a sauce over cooked fish, chicken, vegetables, rice or grains, or use in the salad dressing recipe below. Can be made a day ahead. (Flavours will intensify.) Refrigerate in an airtight container. Stir and taste again, adjust seasonings before using.

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Spring Green Garlic and Avocado Salad Dressing

Makes about 2 1/4 cups

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Ingredients

Spring Green Garlic and Avocado Sauce (see recipe)

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus as needed

1/2 cup and 1 tablespoon lemon juice, plus as needed

1/4 teaspoon salt, plus as needed

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, plus as needed

1/2 teaspoon sugar, plus as needed (optional)

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Directions

1. Mix sauce, olive oil, and lemon juice together in a jar or bowl. Taste. 
2. Add sugar and additional oil, juice, salt and pepper as needed. 

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Can be made a day in advance. (Flavours will intensify.) Refrigerate in an airtight container. Stir and taste again, adjusting seasonings before using.

September 8, 1628

I stood on the deck of a Dutch admiral flagship, staring into a gray Atlantic dawn. The mist lay thick as wool over the water. For weeks we had hunted rumours of a treasure convoy sailing from New Spain to Spain.

I told myself not to hope. Then I saw it.

A shape in the fog. At first I thought my eyes betrayed me. I wiped them with the back of my sleeve. I looked again and saw topsails swelling like ghosts rising from the sea, appearing one by one.

“Ships,” I yelled. 

A Dutch sailor beside me squinted. “How many?”

“Enough to make widows in Seville.”

The mist dissipated. Sunlight caught polished wood and brass. The sight struck my chest like cannon fire. It was the famed Silver Fleet. 

We counted them: twelve Spanish ships heavy with ninety-two tons of silver. Chests of pearls. Rubies glowing like captured sunsets. Enough gold to ransom kings.

In that moment, they saw us, now we were the prey being hunted.

Our admiral barked orders in clipped Dutch. Drums rolled as twenty-five of our ships fanned outward in a tightening net.

“Hold your fire. Let them see our formidable ships. Let fear do its work.”

The Spanish ships had no escort warships. Their guns were loaded for ceremony when they reached port, not battle. When our hulls encircled the fleet, confusion rippled across their decks.

One of my crew laughed. “They thought God hid them.”

“God hides no silver from me,” I replied.

Nine ships surrendered without a shot. Not a cannon fired, not a blade drawn. They struck their colours fearful for their lives.

But three galleons fled, their sails snapping in panic, heading for the harbour of Matanzas in Cuba.

“After them,” I ordered.

The chase was brief. Fear makes poor sailors. By the time we reached Matanzas Bay, the three galleons had anchored in desperation.

I grinned. 

We lowered boats. As we rowed toward the admiral’s galleon, I could see the Spanish crew scrambling. Some shouted prayers. Others argued. Muskets were raised, then lowered. Discipline dissolves quickly when fear of death is involved.

We threw grappling hooks. The iron bit into Spanish railings.

“Up!” I shouted.

I climbed with cutlass between my teeth, boots scraping the hull. The sea slapped against the wood below. For a heartbeat I wondered how many of my ancestors had been chased from Spain with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Now, I returned. Not as a supplicant. An avenger.

When we reached the deck, chaos reigned. Spanish sailors were leaping overboard, splashing toward shore like frightened children.

One officer tried to rally them. “Stand! Stand for Spain!”

I stepped forward, pistol levelled.

“Buena Guerra!” I roared. Good war.

The words echoed across the deck, not as battle cry, but a declaration. A reckoning the Spanish knew all too well.

My men fired a volley of muskets. Smoke swallowed us. When it cleared, Spanish swords clattered to the deck.

Their captain stared at me, eyes wide. “You are pirates.”

I wiped salt spray from my beard. “No,” I said evenly. “We are collectors.”

He looked at the ring on my hand, the one I never removed. He looked at the men around me. Dutch. Sephardic. Hardened by exile.

“You are Jews,” he whispered.

“Yes. And so are a few of the crew. Today, Spain pays interest for its persecution of our people.”

Within minutes the admiral’s galleon was ours. By nightfall, we had secured the entire fleet. When the cargo manifests were read aloud, even hardened sailors went silent.

Ninety-two tons of silver. Pearls in sacks like grain. Rubies the size of thumbnails. Gold bars stacked like bricks.

One Dutch officer clapped me on the shoulder. “This will cripple Spain.”

I gazed at the glittering piles and felt something deeper than greed.

“They bled the New World for this. Before that, they bled us.”

The sea wind cooled my face. In the distance, Spanish sailors who had swum ashore watched helplessly as their empire’s treasure drifted away under Dutch colours.

And as the ships turned northward, heavy with silver and vengeance, I stood at the rail and allowed myself one private smile.

Exile had made me many things: Merchant. Corsair. Avenger. But on that September morning in the mist, I became something else entirely. I became Spain’s reckoning.

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On the voyage back to Holland, I began recording my story so that those who came after would know that my life did not begin with a sword or cannon, but with religion, teachers, and a special mentor. Above all, I owed a debt to Rabbi Palache and to the brave Jews who endured before us. Their names filled my waking hours: men like the corsair Sinan and the legendary Queen of the Jewish pirates, and the countless conversos who struck back at our Spanish and Portuguese tormentors from the pirate ships.

I was born in Portugal in 1595 to converso parents who still whispered Hebrew prayers behind shuttered windows. My birth was the impetus for my parents to escape the shroud of the Spanish Inquisition. Like so many of our people hunted by the long arm of the Inquisition, my parents fled north to the fragile refuge of the Dutch bustling port of Amsterdam.

There, for the first time, I reclaimed my Jewish name.

Amsterdam’s Sephardic quarter was young and alive with ambition; merchants spoke Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, and Dutch. Ships of every nationality crowded the harbour. I was sent by my parents to study Torah and the laws of our people, and it was there that I came under the guidance of Rabbi Palache.

He was already old when I first sat before him, his beard streaked with gray and his eyes bright with the memory of places I had never seen.

One evening, after study, he closed the great book of Torah with a soft thud and regarded me.

“You listen with two ears, Moses,” he said. “One for God, and one for the world.”

“I try, Rabbi.”

“You do more than try. I see the harbour in your eyes.”

I glanced toward the window where the masts of ships swayed beyond the rooftops.

“My father says trade is the future for our people,” I said.

“Trade and courage to take back from our enemies what they stole from us. The Spaniards drove us from our homes. They burned our books and called it holiness. Do you believe God commands us to suffer forever?”

“No, Rabbi.”

“Good,” he said with a faint smile. “Some of our people fight with prayer. Others with coin. And a courageous few with sails and cannon.”

“You mean pirates?”

“Privateers. When justice wears a mask.”

He stood and walked to the window, looking out toward the harbour.

“The sea is a strange court, Moses. There, a Jew may take back what kings have stolen. Gold from Spanish galleons often began its journey in the hands of our people.”

“Would God allow such a life?”

The rabbi turned back toward me.

“God allows many things. What matters is purpose. If you sail, remember who you are and our people.”

I nodded, though I did not yet understand the weight of those words.

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By the time of my Bar Mitzvah in 1616, I stood among a growing and prosperous community of Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam. Our merchants financed fleets, traded across oceans, and rebuilt lives once shattered by exile. We were tolerated by the Dutch for our commerce and our connections, though never fully embraced as equals.

Still, we knew the truth of who we were. In that age, it was the closest thing to freedom the world could offer.

The rest of my teenage years passed between study and the docks. When my lessons were finished and the rabbis dismissed us, I hurried toward the harbour. Amsterdam’s docks were a world larger than any book. A forest of masts dotted the horizon with ropes creaking in the wind, the air thick with tar and salt, and the shouting of sailors in a dozen languages.

I lingered wherever ships were unloading. Crews came in from Brazil, the Caribbean, the Ottoman ports, and half the harbours of Europe. Sailors talked when given a mug of ale or a sympathetic ear, and I listened more than I spoke. From them I gathered fragments of knowledge: Spanish and Portuguese trade routes, the timing of treasure convoys, which ports were friendly to our Sephardic brothers, and which would deliver a Jew straight into the hands of the Inquisition.

I carried a small notebook tucked inside my coat. I wrote everything in it: which merchants quietly financed privateering voyages, which captains had the courage for a fight, what cargo a ship carried when it sailed west and what silver or sugar it brought back. The dockworkers began to recognize me. I was the thin Jewish boy always asking questions, always writing.

The Sephardic trading houses discovered that the boy with the notebook remembered everything. I began running errands as a factor for them—carrying letters, confirming cargo manifests, passing along information gathered from the sailors. What began as curiosity became useful.

At the same time I studied the craft of the sea itself. Old pilots showed me how to read the stars and the currents. Bosuns barked lessons in shipboard discipline that I memorized. From every tale of battle I listened for one thing—the weaknesses of Spanish galleons when the shooting began.

By the time I reached manhood, I knew the docks of Amsterdam as well as any sailor. I knew the routes of Spanish treasure, the men who hunted it, and the merchants willing to risk everything to capture it.

All that remained was to take my place among them.

In 1615, when the chance finally came, I seized it as a drowning man seizes a rope. The Dutch West India Company was gathering men for its grand ventures across the Atlantic, and I knew this was the path I had been preparing for since my boyhood days along the Amsterdam docks.

Many of my own people had already found their place within the Company. Sephardic Jews served as merchants, navigators, cartographers, financiers, and, when necessary, privateers. We carried knowledge that the Dutch valued: the languages of Spain and Portugal, the secrets of their trade routes, and the locations of their distant ports. For the first time in generations, the enemies who had driven our families from Iberia would feel my sword of revenge upon the sea.

When I entered the Company’s counting house to present myself, the room hummed with ambition. Maps of the Atlantic covered the walls as well as Brazil and the Caribbean. The Spanish Main with its lines of trade and silver routes were drawn like veins carrying the lifeblood of Spain’s empire.

A clerk studied my papers and glanced up. “You speak Spanish and Portuguese?”

“Fluently. And I know the routes their treasure fleets favour.”

 “And the sea?”

“I have studied her since I was a boy.”

He looked at me for a long time, then gave a faint smile as he dipped his quill in ink.

The Dutch West India Company was not merely a trading venture. It was a weapon. Its ships carried merchants and missionaries but also cannons and men eager for prize money. Commerce, colonization, and war sailed together beneath its flag.

For me, it meant something more personal.

Every Spanish galleon we hunted carried the wealth of the empire that had hunted my people. Every Portuguese merchantman we intercepted reminded me why my parents had fled their homeland.

When I signed my name to the Company rolls, I knew my life had changed.

I was no longer merely the curious boy who haunted the docks with a notebook in his coat.

I had become a destroyer of empires.

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By the early 1620s I had taken service as a navigator aboard a Dutch privateer cruising the long green coast of Brazil. The Dutch West India Company called us privateers. The Spanish called us pirates. I cared little what they named us. Every captured galleon was a small act of justice. From the quarterdeck I studied the horizon.

“Anything, Moses?” the captain would call.

“Patience. The Portuguese sugar ships will come. They always come.”

The coast of Brazil was a busy artery of Iberian wealth. Sugar, tobacco, hides, and silver flowed north toward Lisbon and Seville. Our job was simple, interrupt and seize that flow.

One humid afternoon a lookout’s cry split the air. “Sail to the east!”

I raised my glass. A fat Portuguese merchant carrack waddled across the water, her sails heavy and slow with cargo.

“There she is,” I said.

The captain grinned like a wolf. “Helm, bring us about.”

Our ship slid toward her. At two hundred yards we ran up the Prince’s flag and opened with our bow guns. The thunder of cannon rolled across the water.

The Portuguese crew panicked. “Boarders ready!” the captain shouted.

Cutlass in hand, I climbed the netting with the others. The two ships crashed together with a groan of wood.

“Buena guerra!” someone shouted mockingly toward the Iberian sailors.

A few muskets cracked, but their will was already broken. Within minutes we controlled the deck. Bales of sugar and chests of silver coins filled the hold.

The captain clapped my shoulder.

“Your charts again, Moses. You have a nose for Spanish gold.”

“It is not a nose. It is memory.”

For every voyage, I carried the knowledge of Sephardic merchants scattered across the Atlantic world—brothers, cousins, and secret Jews living behind Christian names in Iberian ports. They transferred information through coded letters and quiet conversations. 

Between cruises we returned to Amsterdam, where the docks smelled of tar, spices, and money. There I shed the salt-stained clothes of a sailor and moved easily among the Sephardic trading houses.

In the counting rooms I served as interpreter between Dutch captains and Jewish merchants whose networks stretched from Recife to Venice.

One evening a merchant named Isaac Aboab leaned across a table scattered with shipping manifests.

“You have been to Bahia recently, yes?”

“Three months ago.”

“A convoy leaves Pernambuco next month. Sugar and Brazilian gold. Portuguese escort, but not strong.”

I studied the dates.

“And the route?”

Isaac tapped the map.

“They will hug the coast until Cape São Roque. After that they turn north for Lisbon.”

I smiled slowly. “They will not reach Lisbon.”

“Good. The Spanish king grows rich from the suffering of our people. It is time the sea collected its tax.”

These conversations were my true work. Sailors believed victories came from courage and cannon. They were wrong.

Victories came from information.

I gathered every scrap of shipping schedules, convoy sizes, captains’ habits, hidden anchorages along the Brazilian coast. I kept my own notebooks, filled with routes and weaknesses.

One night a young Dutch officer noticed me studying charts long after the others had gone ashore.

“You work like a rabbi over holy texts,” he said.

“In a way,” I replied.

He laughed. “What scripture are you reading?”

I tapped the map. “Spanish greed.”

Years passed this way: voyages, seizures, intelligence, and the endless rhythm of the Atlantic. My reputation as a navigator and informant grew among the captains of the West India Company.

In 1627 word spread through the docks of Amsterdam about a bold admiral assembling a fleet for a great strike against Spain.

His name, Piet Pieterszoon Hein, carried through every tavern and counting house.

One night a captain slid a mug of ale toward me and spoke quietly.

“Hein is planning something big. Not just merchant ships.”

“What then?” 

He leaned closer.

“The Spanish Silver Fleet.”

For a moment the noise of the tavern vanished.

I looked down at the map spread before us, imagining the treasure fleets crossing the Caribbean like floating mountains of silver.

Slowly I smiled.

“If Hein truly intends that, he will need men who know the Spanish routes.”

The captain raised his mug.

“Then it seems your moment has arrived, Moses.”

And I knew the sea was about to offer something greater than scattered merchant prizes.

It was about to offer history.

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After my success in capturing the treasure fleet, I found that victory brings a strange silence. A man can spend his youth chasing wind, cannon smoke, and Spanish gold, but sooner or later he hears another calling. Mine came in 1632, when I sailed south to the Dutch possession of Recife, determined to trade the sword for study.

Recife was unlike any place I had known. Ships crowded its harbour: Dutch traders, Jewish merchants, African sailors, soldiers of fortune, and men who had fled Spain and Portugal with nothing but their names and their faith. With the help of many Sephardic brothers—some merchants, some navigators, some who, like me, had earned their living as privateers—we helped transform the city into the first great Jewish center in the New World.

For the first time in our wandering history, we could pray openly.

I still remember the day our community gathered to dedicate the synagogue, Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue. The doors were thrown wide to the sunlight. No hidden rooms. No whispered prayers behind shuttered windows. No fear of the Inquisition’s knock.

An old merchant beside me wiped tears from his beard.

“Do you hear it?” he whispered.

“Hear what?” I asked.

“Our voices. For once, no one is trying to silence them.”

The sound of Hebrew prayer rose through the hall like a long-delayed storm breaking. In that moment I knew we had won a victory greater than any treasure fleet.

Still, a wolf does not become a lamb simply by changing harbours.

Though I pursued study and helped guide our growing community, I never abandoned the sea. From time to time I returned to my former craft: privateering along the Brazilian coast, coordinating intelligence on Spanish shipping, advising Dutch captains who sought Iberian treasure. Old habits cling like salt to a sailor’s coat.

My final great scheme came years later when I had learned that another Spanish silver fleet would soon sail from the Americas toward Europe. My mind ignited with the old fire. I drew up a daring plan: Dutch naval ships and privateers lying in wait, striking the fleet before it could assemble its escorts.

In a council chamber thick with tobacco smoke, I spread my maps across the table.

“We know their routes,” I said. “Their captains grow complacent. Strike swiftly and the treasure of the Indies will once again belong to the Dutch.”

The young officer nodded, smelling the riches. But an older admiral shook his head.

“The Spanish sail is stronger now. Too many escorts. Too great a risk.”

I argued long into the night.

But fear, like rust, eats courage. The plan was rejected.

When I left the chamber I laughed to myself. Not bitterly. Simply with the knowledge that the age of bold gambles was passing.

So I turned my energy to building Jewish life in Recife, guiding merchants, settling disputes, and helping new refugees from Portugal find a place among us. Our community flourished, rich with trade, scholarship, and the stubborn joy of survival.

But history rarely grants Jews a long season of peace.

In 1654, after nine bitter years of war, the Portuguese recaptured Dutch Brazil during the Insurrection of Pernambuco. Their decree was simple and final: Jews had three months to leave or face death.

Once again we packed our lives into chests and ships.

As my vessel pulled away from Recife harbour, I watched the shoreline fade into the haze. For a brief shining moment we had built a free Jewish city in the New World. Empires had crushed it, but they could not erase what had been created there.

When I returned to Amsterdam, the Sephardic community received me warmly. Among those who honoured my years in Brazil was the poet Daniel Levi de Barrios, who wrote of the work we had done in Recife.

He wrote that Abraham Cohen—his poetic name for me—had spent nine years aiding countless Jews and Christians alike in their misery, providing what help he could in troubled times.

Gold fades. Silver is spent. Even the mightiest fleets vanish into memory. But the true treasure of my life was never buried in Spanish chests. It was the sight of Jews praying in the open sunlight of Recife free, if only for a little while.

This series of ceramic sculptures draws from iconic moments in Seinfeld, focusing on the character of Cosmo Kramer as both cultural symbol and exaggerated human form. My focus on Seinfeld is rooted in my Jewish heritage and in the cultural impact of its two Jewish creators, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. Their success, along with the show’s subtle Jewish references and sensibilities woven throughout its humour, draws me to reinterpret its main characters through clay.

By translating televised comedy into hand-built ceramic form, I transform fleeting visual gags into tactile, enduring objects. Humour becomes material—slowed down, reshaped, and given weight.

Each piece references a specific episode. “The Hot Tub” captures Kramer after spending the night in freezing water when his heat pump breaks, his body suspended in deep blue glaze, where slapstick shifts into stillness. “The Butter Shave” reimagines Newman’s hallucination of Kramer as a turkey, turning a special-effects joke into a fully embodied sculptural transformation. “The Puffy Shirt” explores the flamboyant costume Jerry unknowingly agrees to wear on television, examining how clothing can overtake identity and turn misunderstanding into spectacle. Finally, the Kramer bust distills the character into expression alone—his posture, hair, and animated features capturing a personality perpetually in motion.

Working in ceramics allows exaggeration to remain imperfect and human. Glossy surfaces and hand-built forms preserve texture and irregularities, grounding pop culture in physical presence. What was once ephemeral—broadcast, laughter, illusion—becomes solid and intimate.

Through this series, I explore how comedy shapes collective memory and how Jewish creators have influenced mainstream cultural narratives. By reconstructing these moments in clay, I emphasize the main characters as vessels of humour, identity, and shared cultural memory.

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It is Friday morning. Mother is the first to wake up. She lights the oven. On Fridays, she kneads bread for the entire week. She keeps the sifted flour in a special wooden chest, and in one corner of it she always keeps a sourdough starter. After every kneading, Mother leaves a piece of the risen dough for the next time.

         With this starter she prepares doughs that need to rise—biscochos. She keeps the baked bread wrapped in a white sheet in a separate wooden chest with a lid. Then she cooks dishes for the Shabbat dinner, and the rest of the weekend.

         My sisters, Blanca and Rifka, and I help her. We follow Mother through the house and, following her advice, do all the necessary work. There is so much love, togetherness, and liveliness between these walls, washed by the mild morning sun. The floorboards creak with the joy of our footsteps, and Mother’s voice caresses my soul.

         The day passes. Time flows on.

         When we were younger, while Mother was preparing buriquitas, I used my small, childish hands to crush a lump of sea salt in the brass mortar, grinding it fine, while Rifka ground roasted coffee in the brass mill with a handle. In the cupboard we keep the coffee and sugar in tin boxes. Above the sink hangs a water can with a small tap. In one corner lies a bar of homemade soap. Blanca, being the eldest, washes the dishes with wood ash.

         The day passes. Time flows on.

         “It’s neither Saturday, nor is the ducat on the ground,” I hear Mother say in a slightly serious voice as the rustle of her dress comes closer and closer to me.

         As we grew up, Mother altered and mended our clothes so they could be worn until they were completely torn. Even then, she would cut the torn garments into thin strips, join them together, and from them weave the rug in the hallway and knit the bedspread for the smaller room.

         When Mother finishes the handwork she prepares for our dowries, she places it in the chests in the basement. What treasure is hidden in those chests! Cloths embroidered with the finest red, green, yellow, and blue-silver thread—what beauty!

         “He who does not work does not eat,” I hear Mother say.

         “The stomach is not filled with words!”

         “He who does not work does not eat,” I repeat Mother’s words to myself. The stomach is not filled with words. The day passes, and time with it.

         In the pot, beans are boiling for tonight. The wine for kiddush is ready. We will put the eggs on to boil later. Now Blanca is preparing buriquitas with meat and pumpkin. They are light and quick to prepare.

         She puts one cup of oil, one cup of water, and a scant teaspoon of salt over the fire to boil. She removes the pot from the heat and suddenly adds half a kilogram of sifted, warmed flour, stirring quickly with a wooden spoon.

         “Blanca, add a little more flour so the dough becomes soft,” Mother says, and her voice echoes between the kitchen walls like the most melodious Spanish romance, lingering there to quiver and dance like the fluttering of white butterfly wings in spring across the greening fields, valleys, and hills around Monastir.

         “So the dough becomes soft,” Blanca repeats with a gentle smile.

         “As soft as an earlobe!” the three of us say in one voice, laughing. Our laughter flies out like a white dove through the open window, echoing through the Jewish Quarter and the surrounding alleys, soaring high into the blue, clear sky.

         The day passes, and time with it.

         “A mother tongue never dies, and the Sephardic culture and tradition will live on through you, my dear children,” Mother says. “Remember my words and do not forget: hope nourishes faith.”

         Blanca obediently adds a little more flour. She forms small balls from the mixture and rolls them out with a rolling pin. In the middle of each crust she places the filling that Rifka prepared from ground meat sautéed with a little water, onion, pepper, salt, five peeled and finely chopped olives—my task—and an egg.

         I love eating buriquitas with walnuts or hazelnuts the most.

         Blanca folds the dough in half and cuts the pieces with a glass so that they take on the shape of a crescent moon. She lines them up on a greased baking tray, brushes them with egg white, and sprinkles them with sesame seeds. Then she places the tray in the oven.

         The whole house begins to smell of warm dough, soft as a soul and deliciously baked—sweet and savoury little beauties.

         Blanca opens the oven. The buriquitas have turned golden brown.

         “Mmmm . . .”

         She takes out the tray and covers it with a cotton cloth. Tomorrow, for Saturday breakfast, after the men return from the synagogue, we will bring them to the table with boiled eggs and anise rakija.

         The day passes, and time with it.

         “Remember, my children, where two eat, three can eat as well. Bread, salt, and goodwill!” Mother says as she prepares an onion stew in a copper pan for Sunday lunch, because Sunday is laundry day and there is much work to be done.

         She adds cubed beef and sautés it with three tablespoons of oil. I chop seven onions, though it tastes even better in winter when we replace half the onions with leeks and, instead of grated tomatoes, add a large spoonful of tomato paste.

         Once the meat has softened, she transfers it to a copper pot and adds a cup of water, a small cup of rice, a whole head of garlic, two peppers, parsley, celery, black pepper, red paprika, and salt.

                The day passes, and time flows on.

         I love Friday and Saturday the most. I love Shabbat as much as I look forward to Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Las Frutas, Purim, and Pesach. I love the preparations: rice pudding and small cookies for the Purim plate, pandispan and mlechnik, but most of all pastel dultsi.

         I love the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners when we are all around the table—Isaac, Abraham, Blanca, Rifka and I, with Mother and Father—together for Shabbat, which I always await with immeasurable joy.

         “Hana, Blanca, Rifka—remember, my daughters,” Mother says while we help her spread the tablecloth. “A house without a woman will crumble. Be thrifty in everything.”

         She places the bread in its embroidered cover and sets linen napkins with monograms for everyone. If any bread remains, it is carefully wrapped for the next meal.

         My older brothers, Isaac and Abraham, join Father in the prayer. Mother lights the candles and pours a little wine into small glasses for each of us. Shabbat begins, and the house fills with quiet peace.

         Mother stands while the prayer is read. She is the last to sit at the table and the first to rise.

         The candlelight flickers softly across the faces of my brothers and sisters, of Mother and Father. Father reads the Sabbath prayer in a calm voice, and at the end we all answer, “Amen.”

         Mother gives each of us a piece of bread with salt and blesses us: “For health and joy.” Para salu i alegriya.

         After dinner she prepares the beds for sleep, spreading reed mats on the floor and laying mattresses over them. In winter, when the brazier must be extinguished for the night, she wraps warm bricks in our bedding so that we will not feel the cold.

         Time passes.

         Para salu i alegriya.

         For health and joy.

         Mother’s voice echoes softly as I fall asleep, drifting into the land of dreams and fairy tales.

Leah Goldberg’s poetry and stories have moved me since childhood. In her unassuming yet distinct way, she conveyed messages of friendship, community, and tolerance through everyday experiences, often with a quiet emotional clarity that continues to resonate.

Goldberg migrated from Lithuania to British-mandate Palestine in 1936. Her work intertwines themes of love, loss, and belonging with reflections on the immigrant experience and the feeling of living between places. Having migrated from Israel to Australia myself, I feel a deep resonance with her words, as captured in her poem, “Pines”:
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“Perhaps only migrating birds know –
suspended between earth and sky –
the heartache of two homelands.”

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A few years ago, I co-created a theatrical performance piece dedicated to Goldberg’s life and work. While composing music for that show, I wrote several songs inspired by her poetry, allowing the language to guide melody, rhythm, and tone. Returning to these poems recently, I was reminded of their delicacy and humanity, and felt drawn to explore that emotional thread more fully in new recordings.

This EP album release also connects to an earlier project of mine, which featured musical settings of poems by Yehuda Amichai, who once described Goldberg as “the poet I fell in love with at age 17.”

In Word to Note, her poems are reimagined through a contemporary folk lens, featuring cello, piano, voice, and bass guitar, with contributions from Shanni Cohen on piano and Neil Kelly on bass guitar.

Through these songs, I hope Goldberg’s reflections on identity, home, and connection can reach listeners across languages and generations, offering a quiet reminder of empathy, attentiveness, and shared humanity.

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To a Picture of My Mother (לתמונת אימי)

Poem by Leah Goldberg
Music by Adi Sappir
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Lyrics: 

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You look so calm
You are other:
Proud, a bit, and embarrassed at being - my mother.
Accompanying me with a tear and a yielding smile
You never ask: “Who?”

You never wondered, never raged, when I came
To you daily demanding: “I need!”
With your own hands you gave all
Only because I am—me.

More than I, you remember today
My childhood's sorrows, and what your soul knew then:
The day your grown daughter would come to you,
She would bring with her grief that had grown up too.

Yes. I'll come broken and not ask how you are.
I'll not cry in your arms, not whisper: “Mama!”;
You'll know then: He who left me was dearer to me than you,
And you'll never ask: “Who?”

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March 30, 1941

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Snow was falling, steady and heavy, onto the upper deck of the Serpa Pinto, the ship which had been our home, with six hundred fellow Jews and other refugees, for the last fifteen days. Built to accommodate three hundred, she had carried us well in spite of the overload, and I imagined she was happy to be rid of us soon. My twin sister, Hannah, and I stood with my parents who were crying quietly. I elbowed Hannah, but she had already noticed. It was a sight neither of us had ever seen, even in the face of all we had recently been through. At nine years old, we were the youngest on the ship. Our parents had taken great pains to keep us close to them throughout our journey from Lisbon. They were less protective of our older brothers, Arthur, who was thirteen, and Josef, who was fifteen, throwing snowballs at one another. 

Hannah answered my nudge with a slight shift toward me. These were the subtle movements the two of us had developed, the silent communication of identical twins. We had always done this, and our mother prided herself in being able to intercept and decode our messages like a spy. Through what I could now see were happy tears, shared by all of the adults, she had sensed how badly we both wanted to be with the other children who were frolicking noisily in the falling snow. She nodded, signaling it was alright for us to join our brothers in the fun. Hannah leapt on her toes and grabbed my hand, but before I let her pull me with her, I followed the eyes of the grown-ups hoping for a glimpse of whatever it was that held their collective attention so firmly. I saw the outline in the snow of that statue I’d seen in history books and newsreels, the one with the torch held high and the crown of spikes on her head. 

“We’ve made it,” someone said. Our parents embraced, and their public intimacy fascinated me almost as much as the giant, scary lady whose solemn face I could barely make out through the falling snow.

“Heidi, come!” my sister said, yanking on my hand so hard it hurt.

“Ow!”

Our Mary Jane shoes were not made for this weather, and we half ran, half slid our way over to where Arthur had begun making a snowman. A couple of dark-eyed girls, their hair pulled back in tight ponytails, were watching Arthur work. They giggled when he smiled at them, his blue eyes twinkling in that way Hannah and I both adored. There was not much snow to work with yet, but Arthur was skilled at scraping what there was together and making discernible shapes out of it. My sister and I stood with the two Roma girls and marvelled at the magic that was our brother Arthur. 

“That’s our brother,” I told one of them. She simply smiled and giggled some more, before saying something to the other girl, who I imagined to be her younger sister, in a language I’d never heard before. Since they didn’t understand my German, I tried English, which I’d more recently learned at Saint Julian’s school, where all four of us attended when we first arrived in Portugal, in the fall of 1938. She shook her head, as if saying, “Sorry. Don’t know that one either.”

Before Hannah or I could try the French they taught us in first grade, Josef sprinted over from where he had been making snow angels with a very pretty girl called Rita whom he had shared an obvious flirtation with throughout our journey. He had something in his arms which, I realized just in time, were three snowballs. He fired them in succession. Hannah and I ducked, as did the two girls standing next to us, but Arthur failed to see our older brother coming, and he took a direct hit in the neck.

“Bloody hell!” Arthur called out in the perfect schoolboy English he had learned at Saint Julian’s. It had become natural for him, as it had for Josef, Hannah, and me.

“Ooh,” Hannah and I intoned in perfect harmony. Our mother knew little English, but she knew this kind of talk and would not be happy if she heard it. 

Before Arthur could retaliate, he and Josef both noticed the statue. 

“Come on!” Josef yelled, and we all, including the two dark-eyed girls, followed him to join the crowds of people who silently regarded Lady Liberty. Many of the adults were wiping their eyes; no one spoke. A boy with wild brown curls hurled a snowball in the direction of the statue, and a large woman who Hannah and I decided early on was his grandmother, cuffed him hard on the back of his head.

“Mostre algum respeito!” she hissed at him. I knew enough Portuguese from our time in Lisbon to understand the words, and I probably could have guessed them anyway, judging from how quickly the boy quieted down, stood beside his grandmother, and held back tears. 

“Girls, come here,” I heard my mother call in German. “You boys, too.”

We stood together and watched as the ship made its way into port at Ellis Island. Oil smoke and steam obscured what I was able to see from up on deck. 

“Look!” Hannah said, poking my shoulder. “Look at all the doves!”

A large flock of birds flew around the port in wild, coordinated circles.

Josef laughed. “Those aren’t doves. They’re pigeons, aren’t they?”

I had never heard that word before. Mrs. Winfrey, our English teacher at Saint Julian’s did teach us about a number of bird species—doves, cardinals, bluejays, and sparrows. She even made a point to let us know we would be likely to encounter many of them once we arrived in America. How strange that she didn’t mention this one. There appeared to be more of them than people. 

“Arthur, are you alright?” my mother asked in German. She was inspecting a large, red welt on his neck.

Arthur squinted at Josef, before answering in English.

“Yes, Mother. Quite alright.”

Our father gathered us and shepherded us inside to our cabin. Getting there was no easy task, as many of those who were up on deck were making their way to collect their things and preparing to disembark. 

“We’re not quite there yet,” he explained as the four of us sat like good soldiers on the bed Hannah and I had shared for the past two weeks. The cabin was first class, small but comfortable, even for my mother, my sister, and me. Father, Josef, and Arthur had their own cabin, a few doors down the corridor.

“But the statue,” I protested. In my mind, all those who came to America came to this statue. They received blessings from the giant woman before making their way to their new lives.

My father explained that because there were so many passengers that would need to be processed, the ship was making two stops—one here at Ellis Island, and one in the Port of Hoboken (a word that made Hannah and me giggle)––a few miles up the river. We would be in the second group. 

“Can we go back on deck to play in the snow some more?” I asked eagerly.

“We’ll let the passengers disembark first,” my mother said, wiping my nose with a handkerchief she produced, as if by magic, from up her coat sleeve. All of our cheeks were red from the cold, so we got comfortable in the dark panelled cabin, amidst the usual smell of oil, the gentle rocking of the ship, and the excited, multi-lingual voices of the throngs of new Americans making their way to the lives that awaited them. Hannah and I snuggled under the covers of our warm bed. My mother busied herself with packing our things, and I watched the snow falling outside the porthole, my sister’s breathing already steadying into sleep beside me.

“In just a few short hours,” our father said, before he and the boys headed down the passageway to their cabin, “we will be home.”