Celebrating with Community in Jewish Heritage Month

Shabbat Message from CEO Ezra S. Shanken
 

We welcomed a very special guest to our community this week: The Honourable Janet Austin, Lieutenant Governor of BC, honorary patron of our Federation. 

The Lieutenant Governor spent a full day getting to know our community. 

I want to thank her for taking the time to visit The Kitchen, Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, the JCC, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and Hillel House at UBC. It was an opportunity to talk together about the strategic work that we and our partners are doing.  I want to thank the Jewish Museum and Archives (JMABC), Shelley Rivkin and Daniella Givon for their presentations about our community. You can see photos on our Facebook page. 

The visit to Hillel was an opportunity to see not just their good work, but how Jewish students are dealing with antisemitism on campus. They are singled out in ways other students and groups simply are not—even those connected with countries that are wrestling with difficult issues within their borders, or are led by dictators, or have dismal human rights records.  

The dichotomy is shocking, and it is part of why we continue to push for local and provincial governments to follow the federal government in adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.  

We marked a big shift back to in-person events this week with Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut.   

Geoffrey Druker, chair of the Yom HaZikaron Committee, led a moving ceremony that included local bereaved families who lost loved ones. Two hundred community members attended in person and over 130 households joined virtually. Remembrance is important to our community, and last Sunday, 30 Israeli women from the Greater Vancouver area participated in a worldwide memorial run for Israeli women fallen soldiers, which was a joint initiative of the World Zionist Organization, WE Israeli Women and our Federation.

The next night we moved from mourning to celebration.  

Nearly 500 people joined us at the Vogue Theatre for what turned into a massive sing-along!  Todah rabah to our emcees (Lu Winters, Kyle Berger, and Adora Harel), the local dance groups and the RJDS choir for performing. Click here for the community song and the program.  

I especially want to thank Pam Wolfman, chair of the Yom Ha’atzmaut Committee, and the committee volunteers that worked with her for making this such a huge success. A big todah rabah, too, to our board chair Candace Kwinter, and Michelle Pollock, chair of our Israel and Global Engagement Committee, for their leadership. This year marked the 20th anniversary of this event, and so we also honoured the Gaerber family, who started this event, for bringing us together to celebrate Israel—thank you! 

These events require support from nearly all Federation staff, and our Israel and Global Engagement department of If’at Eilon-Heiber, Dafna Silberstein, Aluma Zweifler Reicher, and Ofer Joseph take the lead. Kol hakavod! 

In addition to donors and volunteer leaders, our community relies on Jewish community professionals who dedicate their careers to making our community stronger. 

Attracting, growing and retaining talent is important to us and I am very proud that we provided three of our many high performers—Jeff Balin, Gabe Bloomfield and Grace Miller Day—with the opportunity to grow their skills and their networks at JPro. The focus of these conference is on building skills to facilitate more impactful collaborations.  

Speaking of community professionals, I was thrilled to see that the Baitelmans, who have been amazing partners with our Federation, are being honoured at Chabad Richmond's Freilach 25. For community professionals like the Baitlemans there is no line between work and personal because they (like Rachel and I) are part of the community we serve. It is more a calling or a way of life than simply a profession, and so I say to them yasher koach! 

Now that we are in May, which is Jewish Heritage Month, we are nearly ready to share with you some of the exciting new collaborations we have been working on with our partners. Next week, we will fill you in on the series of walking tours that we have planned in collaboration with our partners to highlight our history and the contributions of our local Jewish community to the fabric of our region and our country. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Ezra S. Shanken 
CEO, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver