PLANT A TREE Chanukah features Ken SCHACHNOW FOR ALL OCCASIONS Sales Representative DIRECT: 613.292.2200 TREES $18 | TREE BANK $150 FOR 10 TREES HAPPY CHANUKAH! and columns OFFICE: 613.829.1818 [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] KELLERWILLIAMS 613-798-2411 VIP REALTY www.kenschachnow.com > pages 6, 7, 13, 17, 19, 24, 26 Brokerage, Independently Owned And Operated Ottawa Jewish Bulletin DECEMBER 8, 2014 | 16 KISLEV 5775 ESTABLISHED 1937 OTTAWAJEWISHBULLETIN.COM | $2 Celebrating 40 years Flames of faith to be relit of partnership The Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation and Jewish Federation of Ottawa have worked together for four decades. Louise Rachlis speaks with current leaders of both organizations and a founder of the Foundation. ne of the founders of the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation calls it a “miracle” Othat the Foundation got started back in 1971. But the Foundation has thrived, and 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of the partnership between the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – known as the Jewish Community Council of Ottawa/ Vaad Ha’Ir until 2005 – and the Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation. Ottawa Jewish Community Foundation The Foundation gives donors a vehicle Chair Lynne Oreck-Wener (left) and Jewish to contribute to the long-term fi nancial Federation of Ottawa Chair Steven Kimmel stability of the Ottawa Jewish community look forward to further collaboration as the and to support the needs of the agencies two organizations mark 40 years of working together. serving it. “The work of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa and the Foundation are community. It’s a holistic way of looking synergistic,” said Andrea Freedman, at our community,” said Foundation president and CEO of the Federation and Chair Lynne Oreck-Wener. “Our missions the Foundation. “The Federation’s are different, but we work co-operatively. Annual Campaign takes care of needs We give a signifi cant amount to the today, while the Foundation contributes Federation from our allocated funds Susan Bloomfield presents the menorah she inherited from her great-uncle Gerard Richel to meeting today’s needs, and also every year. Working in partnership and to Rabbi Menachem Blum of the Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad (OTC). Richel received the secures our future. At the Foundation, shared staff makes so much more sense.” menorah as a gift from the Jewish family he hid in the attic of his home in The Netherlands we like to say that there you actually can “We’ve recently strengthened and during the Second World War, thus saving them from the Nazis. The menorah will be lit ‘live forever’ by making a legacy gift.” expanded our relationship through during Chanukah for the first time since the war at OTC. (For more about this menorah, “We are working together, and our legacy gifts,” said Federation Chair Steven see Rabbi Blum’s From the Pulpit column on page 6.) partnership is of great benefi t to the See Partnership on page 4 Hillel Lodge resident survives Ottawa’s only Barbara Crook on Jerusalem inside: atomic bomb at Nagasaki > p. 3 female mashgiach > p. 11 synagogue attack > p. 25 World Class Outsourcing ... and more! 613-744-6444 613-244-7225 Providing quality service 613-744-5767 613-244-4444 to the National Capital Region Publication Mail Agreement No. 40018822 since 1947! www.boydgroup.on.ca 2 December 8, 2014 OTTAWAJEWISHBULLETIN.COM Pearls of Wisdom: Film event honours women who experienced the Holocaust BY LOUISE RACHLIS are bleak and lonely. quiet black and white fi lm In 1960s Poland, Anna, a young novice made a big impression, nun, is told by her prioress that, before November 23, when it was her vows can be taken, she must visit her A screened at the Women’s family. Anna travels to her aunt Wanda, a Collective Philanthropy Program’s Pearls heavy-drinking judge and former of Wisdom event on “Women and the prosecutor associated with the Stalinist Holocaust.” regime, who dispassionately reveals that PHOTO: HOWARD SANDLER Ida (pronounced Eeda) is an Anna’s actual name is Ida Lebenstein, Women’s Collective Philanthropy Program Co-chairs Yaffa Greenbaum (second from left) and award-winning 2013 Polish drama and that her parents were Jewish and Eileen Melnick-McCarthy (right) with Polish Deputy Ambassador Andrzej Fafara (left) and Olga directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. It was were murdered during the war. Ida and Jablonska, second-secretary, press and protocol, of the Embassy of Poland, at the Pearls of Wisdom event, November 23 attended by an audience of about 200 at Wanda embark on a journey to fi nd their the Chamber Theatre at Ben Franklin resting place. shadows, and the opportunity to “fi ll in Program Co-chairs Eileen Melnick- Place in Centrepointe. Shopsowitz said, watching the fi lm for the blanks yourself in the story” and put McCarthy and Yaffa Greenbaum said “It is one of the quietest fi lms I’ve ever a second time, she noticed so much your own spin on it. the event both honoured the women seen and that says so incredibly much,” more than in her fi rst viewing. She said “The black and white refl ected the who experienced the Holocaust and said Canadian fi lmmaker Karen Shop- the director chose to do the fi lm in black depressive nature of the women,” said educated “all of us” so that we never sowitz, who led the after-fi lm discussion. and white “because it placed it in the audience member Michelle Meyer, a forget its legacy and lessons. The “There’s so much quiet in it that we are look of 1962.” child of Holocaust survivors. “There was Women’s Collective Philanthropy not used to seeing in American movies.” Audience members commented so much that was powerful in this fi lm. Program, a program of the Ottawa There is no sound track, and scenes positively on the lighting and the I would like to see way more fi lms like Jewish Community Foundation, is this.” actively dedicated to helping women Like the characters in Ida, “postwar and children. Poland had a lot of people who weren’t “This Pearls of Wisdom event sup- sure where they fi t in,” said Shopsowitz. ports our effort in raising funds for the “Now, Poland is having a real resurgence. Women’s Collective Endowment Fund, It has been a very diffi cult thing for Poles which provides grants to deserving to deal with. This fi lm has done very well programs for women and children in internationally. It wasn’t a slam dunk in the Jewish community. The call for Poland.” grants is issued in January 2015,” said The event was supported by the Greenbaum. Embassy of the Republic of Poland in The Women’s Collective Philanthropy Ottawa. Endowment Fund was created in 2009 Poland was a centre of Jewish culture, and strives to engage, educate and said Andrzej Fafara, Poland’s deputy empower women to become catalysts for ambassador to Canada, and there were change. three-and-a-half million Polish Jews in “These goals complement and inform 1939. Almost all perished in the war, everything we do – including choosing killed by German Nazis, and only 100,000 this fi lm,” said Ottawa Jewish remained in Poland by 1945, he said. Community Foundation Chair Lynne “The Museum of the History of Polish Oreck-Wener, a founding member of the Jews dedicated to the 1,000-year history Women’s Collective Philanthropy of Polish Jews has just opened in what Program. was once the heart of Jewish Warsaw, For more information or to become PHOTO: CITY OF OTTAWA Order of Ottawa: In a ceremony at Ottawa City Hall, November 20, philanthropist one part of which became the Warsaw involved with the Women’s Collective and Ottawa Jewish Bulletin columnist Barbara Crook was inducted into the Order ghetto in 1940,” he said. “We are proud to Philanthropy Program, contact Director of Ottawa. Crook is seen with Mayor Jim Watson (left) and Capital Ward Councillor recognize this history ... and move of Development Arieh Rosenblum at David Chernushenko. forward and look to the future.” [email protected] or Women’s Collective Philanthropy 613-798-4696, ext. 270. FREE See page 31 Ask about our FREE hearing aid trials. for Publication Don’t miss a word at Chanukah! and Deadline dates Commercial Sales & Leasing ❋ Consulting ❋ Site Selection/Relocations ❋ Tenant Representation ❋ Feasibility Studies and Investment/User Properties ❋ Strategic Growth Planning ❋ Land Assemblies/Development Sites 2130 Robertson Rd.. Candlelighting BRENT TAYLOR BROKER of RECORD, PRESIDENT Neil Fine times. [email protected] www.brentcomrealty.com 613-726-7323 / FAX 613-721-8849 HearFine.com 613.709.3463 December 8, 2014 3 OTTAWAJEWISHBULLETIN.COM Hillel Lodge resident is only living Canadian who survived the atomic bomb explosion at Nagasaki BY LOUISE RACHLIS illel Lodge resident John Franken was a prisoner of war in Nagasaki, Japan when the HU.S. Air Force detonated an atomic bomb there on August 9, 1945. He is now the only living Canadian to have John Franken in his room at Hillel Lodge. survived the blast. He was working in a coal mine when the Tea at the Embassy. Netherlands in recognition of his efforts. bomb exploded. “One of my father’s jobs as a POW was Roslyn, a motivational speaker, is “Three months before the end of the to transform elementary schools into preparing a book and multi-media war, he was transferred to the coal mines where the comfort women sex slaves were presentation about her parents’ lives, and and that’s what saved his life,” said his kept for the soldiers,” she said. about her own life as a second-generation daughter, Roslyn Franken.