Hillel Academy students visit Charles H. Hulse Public School for Day of Cultural Understanding

Stephen Victor receives honourary fellowship from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

JFS receives funding to help newcomers

The Sea Lions of Judah dragon boat racers

Former ambassador appointed president of Israel-Canada Chamber of Commerce

Controversy arises over the role of the Chevra Kadisha

Lawrence Zinman to be new chair of Jewish Memorial Gardens

Drama and art with Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum

Rabbi Mark Friedman to head JFS seniors’ unit

Jason Kenny at Yad Vashem

Are Israel trips for women the future of Jewish continuity?

Ottawa Jewish Archives exhibit on Evenchick jewelry business

Na’amat Ottawa holds fifth annual Mother’s Day Tea

Fernand Bybelezer remembered

Hillel Lodge tea to honour Dora Litwack

Gambling at Guys Night Out benefits ALS Society

Aviv Quartet to perform at Chamberfest

Israeli band to perform at jazz festival

Hebrew University celebrates medical research institute

Nili project presented by three YRHS students

Federation celebration honours 75 volunteers

Tamir tea to honour former mayor Jacquelin Holzman

By Nicola Hamer, Hillel Academy communications director

When the Grade 6 students at Hillel Academy were given pen pals to write to in English class, they discovered these pen pals were much closer, geographically, than the people they were used to writing to in Israel, but, culturally, much farther away.
At least, that’s what the kids assumed.

They were asked to write to a Grade 6 class at Charles H. Hulse Public School in Alta Vista, in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood.
The Hillel students did go into the project with assumptions.

“I thought she wouldn’t be like me,” admits Talia McCormack, one of the Hillel students. “But, when we were writing letters, I found out we like the same stuff.”
“But, when we were writing letters, I found out we like the same stuff.”

The students began to realize their pen pals weren’t as different as they expected. They found out they all liked the same TV shows and the same music. They had the same types of families and the same concerns about life.
On May 19, the Hillel Grade 6 students spent the day visiting with their pen pals at Hulse. There were still some concerns for some kids, but they proved unfounded.

“My pen pal is partly [Aboriginal], so I thought she’d look different, but she’s just the same as everyone else,” said Talia.

None of this was a surprise to Patrick Mascoe, the Grade 6 teacher at Hulse and organizer of this fifth annual Day of Cultural Understanding. Mascoe reached out to Hillel five years ago, hoping that a connection would help his students apply the principles of tolerance and responsible citizenship he had been teaching them.

They were a little nervous, some of the students admitted, once the day came to finally meet their pen pals. But that nervousness quickly evaporated as the two groups teamed up for a giant scavenger hunt around the school.

The students spent the morning involved in various activities that encouraged interaction with each other. The emphasis, said Mascoe, was on “having fun and discovering our similarities.”

The afternoon was more serious, as the students attended a presentation by David Shentow, a Holocaust survivor who frequently gives talks about his experiences in Auschwitz and Dachau. He emphasized for the students the worst consequences of intolerance.

The cultural understanding program has been a huge success and has gained recognition in the wider community. Premier Dalton McGuinty praised it as it as he launched his provincial campaign on character development and citizenship at Hulse last year. It has also recently been recognized by the Daniel Pearl Foundation on its website.

Does bringing together students from diverse backgrounds this way to promote cultural understanding really work?

In the opinions of those who matter most, the students, it does.

“When you are only around people just like you, you can start to think that people who are different religions are kind of weird,” said Hillel student Meredith Barwin.
“But when you meet them, you find out that everyone is really just the same, no matter what religion they are.”
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Editor’s Column
Michael Regenstreif

Women are increasingly assuming top communal leadership roles
The position of chair of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – or president of the Vaad Ha’Ir as it was known from 1934 until 2005 – is the pinnacle of lay leadership in the Jewish community of Ottawa. This month, Donna Dolansky became the 34th person in the Federation’s 75-year history to rise to that esteemed position.

A long record of accomplishment as a seemingly tireless volunteer and community leader is something that Donna has in common with her 33 consummate predecessors. Same gender, though, is something she shares with only two: Maureen Molot, who was Vaad president from 1991 to 1993; and Barbara Farber, who served from 1997 to 1999. The position has been a male bastion for 71 of the past 75 years.

The fact that almost all past presidents and chairs have been men is not unusual. Look at most Jewish communities and you’ll see that almost all, if not all, of their leadership positions have been male bastions for most of their histories too. With the exception of organizations that are specifically for women, it is only in recent decades that we’ve seen women realizing the top leadership roles in Federations and major organizations.

It’s also worth noting that, for the first time in this Federation’s history, both the chair, Donna Dolansky, and the vice-chair, Debbie Weiss, are women.

Like many other Jewish communities, ours has been evolving. Where it was once unheard of for women to attain such top leadership positions, they now do. And, while it is still a rare enough occurrence that we take note when a woman attains a position like Federation chair, it is becoming more commonplace. In another generation or so, we won’t.

Something else worth noting is that, this year, again for the first time, all three recipients of the community’s annual awards are women. At the Federation’s annual general meeting this month, Ingrid Levitz received the Gilbert Greenberg Distinguished Service Award, Estelle Gunner received the Shem Tov Community Volunteer Award, and Jennifer Kardash received the Freiman Family Young Leadership Award.

Although women in the top leadership positions may still be somewhat novel, women – as exemplified by Ingrid, Estelle and Jennifer – have long been at the forefront of community volunteerism. When the Federation celebrated its 75th anniversary last month by honouring 75 of our most accomplished volunteers, 45 of them – a significant majority of 60 per cent – were women.

Incidentally, the Federation AGM fell just as we were completing production of this issue of the Bulletin. So, we’ll have more complete coverage and photos from the meting in our July edition.

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The non-Orthodox rabbinate is another area that has been opening up to women in the almost-four decades since the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1972. Women rabbis are now well accepted in the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements.

There was an interesting item on the JTA wire recently about Sara Hurwitz, an Orthodox woman who had completed the studies needed to become an Orthodox rabbi. She studied under the guidance of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the director of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, an Orthodox yeshiva for men.

Instead of ‘rabbi,’ though, she was given a new title, maharat – an acronym for Manhigah Hilkhatit Ruhanit Toranit (spiritual, halachic and Torah leader). In other words, she is a rabbi in everything but name.

The JTA article went on to say that Rabbi Weiss and Maharat Hurwitz were founding a new school, Yeshivat Maharat, to train Orthodox women as maharats.

Will the very concept of women as clergy, even if they’re not called ‘rabbis,’ be accepted in Orthodox circles?

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In the April 27 Bulletin, we reported on the 2008 audit of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada from B’nai Brith Canada (BBC). There were, BBC reported, 1,135 reported incidents of anti-Semitism in Canada last year, a rise of 8.9 per cent from 2007. The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada, according to BBC, has risen every year but one over the past decade.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the United States has just released its own audit of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S., a country whose population is about 10 times that of ours. The ADL reports there were 1,352 anti-Semitic incidents in the entire United States in 2008, a decline of seven per cent from 2007. It was the fourth consecutive year in which the ADL has reported a decline in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.

Can it really be possible that, proportionately, Canadians are about 10 times more likely to commit anti-Semitic incidents than Americans?

Or, is it possible that B’nai Brith Canada and the Anti-Defamation League have very different approaches about how or when to define an incident as anti-Semitic?