Calgary Jewish Community

A great question was asked in the comments of my last post about what the Calgary Jewish community is like.

Essentially, I'm the wrong person to ask because I just don't know very much about it yet. However, I'm interested to learn about it myself. So I'll do my best to find some good information! Might as well report back, right? :)

Toronto has the thirteenth largest Jewish population in the world and the largest in Canada, then Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg (where my parents are from; so this is my dad's Jewish community), Ottawa, and then Calgary. At the workshop, they said that there are 9,000 Jews in Calgary. Edmonton has a slightly smaller Jewish community, but my table-mate (who is from Edmonton) says that the communities are pretty similar.

Calgary has a Jewish Community Centre, four or five synagogues (depending on how you look at it), and two Jewish day schools.

When I say four or five synagogues, that just depends on how Beth Shechinah would prefer to be classified:

• Orthodox (very traditional - House of Jacob Mikveh Israel)
• Conservative (moderately traditional - Beth Tzedec)
• Reform (very liberal - Temple B'nai Tikvah)
• Ultra Orthodox (these are Hasidic Jews - they're the guys who wear black suits and hats and grow out their hair and beards - Chabad Lubavitch)
• There is also a messianic Jewish centre (I'm not sure if they'd rather be called a church or a synagogue) - those are the Jews for Jesus - Beth Shechinah 

 For me, I think if I were personally involved with Beth Shechinah, I would consider myself a Christian, but that's an area of Judeo-Christianity that I definitely just don't understand.

As far as the two day schools go, one (Akiva Academy) is affiliated with the Orthodox Synagogue, and the other (Calgary Jewish Academy) is not affiliated with any specific synagogue.

There are a lot more organizations in Calgary, but I guess those are really just the "major" ones.

To answer the question of how community is built and what kinds of events are around, I only know some of the events that I've been able to attend. There are many, many more events and lots of great sounding fundraisers (there's a sports dinner coming up for the Jewish Community Centre in a couple of weeks, for instance). The workshop on the weekend was presented by the Youth Leadership Division of the Calgary Jewish Federation. All of the synagogues and the JCC have lots of great classes for all ages. My dad and I have been going to Jewish Learning Institute classes at the Chabad and a few high holy days services there as well. Beth Tzedec hosts an awesome Jewish Film Festival every year.

Really, those couple of events that I've attended are a drop in the bucket. A good place to look, if you're curious about what else is going on (which is honestly so, so much), is on the Calgary Jewish Federation's website, on their main calendar.

I just have two final comments that are more from me as a newcomer or outside observer, I'm not sure which.

The first thing is that I've been wondering recently if religion will continue to be important in the future or if I've kind of missed the boat on becoming involved in a religious community. I'm a little bit haunted by how Karl Marx, who was born a Jew, referred to religion as the "opiate of the masses". I guess I'm still sorting out whether I think religion is a uniting or dividing force, and whether it's worth it. So there's my disclaimer.

Secondly, and maybe in an answer to my other comment, is that there is something special about the Jewish community in Calgary for me. Maybe it's because I feel like I could fit in or because I do like to be involved in religious communities (I was involved in a Lutheran church for about 5 years or so when I was a teenager). But, what I'm getting at is that there's something special that I feel when I go to an event and I love the loudness and the multitude of conversations that I get to overhear, especially the ones in Yiddish and/or Hebrew that I don't understand.

Sorry for the long, drawn out answer.

L'chaim! (That means "to life", it's what Jews say when they make a toast!)

-L.

Weekend

I just wanted to post something here about my amazing weekend. I think there will be many, many posts to follow this one, but I wanted to just put something out there quickly to say I'm still processing (so, to say nothing at all...)

On Saturday I was honoured to attend TEDxCalgary. The ideas that I got to experience were truly remarkable. I was originally interested in going to see one of my professors from university, Dr. Mark Durieux, speak; but it turned out to be even more. Dr. Durieux was great to hear again, and he was accompanied by 8 other absolutely amazing speakers.

Today I participated in "It's Up 2 Us", which was a community building workshop put on by the Youth Leadership Division (YLD) of the Calgary Jewish Federation. It was a group of 25-45 year olds trying to come up with ideas to make the Jewish community in Calgary the best it can be.

It was a really inspirational weekend; one that made me want to really get involved.

For now, I'm still trying to process and come up with my thoughts, which I'm dying to share here. However, I still am neck-deep in a bunch of different, confused thoughts.

In the meantime, the YLD is putting together a committee to write a report about today's event and I've put myself out there to be part of it, so hopefully that goes well. In other exciting news, I met a couple of really nice girls today and I think we'll be staying in touch, which I'm really stoked about.

I'm working on my first thoughts about yesterday's event and hopefully I'll have that post dusted off soon (as well as my thoughts about the specific topics and today's event) so that I can share them!

Finally, I see that I have a follower! Thanks for joining me on this journey to share some of my thoughts; I'm really humbled to have a follower, so I hope I can provide some context of my life that you might find interesting.

Cheers,

-L.

Would you rather...

I recently took a general business class and the instructor was pretty fascinating, actually - one day he mentioned an ice breaker that he is familiar with for business meetings: Would you rather meet your great grandfather or your great grandson? Of course, my first reaction was wanting to point out how one might be interested in meeting their great grandmother or their great granddaughter as well, but let's put that aside for now. He said that most often, people would choose to meet their great grandfather because they'd be too afraid to see what they'd created. I would definitely have to respectfully disagree with his theory though.

It got me thinking about who I'd rather meet, an ancestor or a descendant. I would absolutely choose an ancestor, but I think and hope that it's not out of fear. It's for a few reasons, actually. One is that I have a pretty good feeling that an ancestor has greater wisdom than I do and, while a descendant might as well, I feel like an ancestor would have more wisdom to share that could make sense in today's context, whereas wisdom from the future may not be as applicable.

Today, I was curious after seeing an ancestry.com commercial and decided to go online and check it out. I typed in my paternal grandfather's name and found his burial information (which I already knew), but it was really cool to see his name online like that. And then I looked for my mother's maternal grandfather and I didn't find as much about him (he was born around 1870), but it definitely was pretty fascinating. There are a lot of people who are very, very interested in genealogy and I guess I can kind of see why.

For me, as cool as it is to see their names online and on old census forms and stuff like that, I wish there was a way to hear about who they really were. I remember my grandmother (whose 89th birthday would have actually been today) telling me a story about her father once. He died when she was very young (he would have been 54 years old when she was born in 1922, which was pretty darn old then, I think) and my mother never knew her grandparents. But my grandmother remembered or had been told a very beautiful story about him that she told me when I was younger. He used to own a grocery store in small town Saskatchewan (I guess this would have taken place in or near Kinistino). A family that they knew who was disadvantaged had purchased a stove from him. Knowing they needed it, he included a full set of dishes in the stove for the family. When this family opened the stove and found the dishes inside, they had assumed that it was an error and, not having paid for the set of dishes, returned them to my great grandfather. I don't exactly remember the end of the story but the idea is that he told them that he had meant to include the dishes and for them to keep them. It's an absolutely beautiful story of generosity, community and respecting the dignity of one's neighbours.

My dad told me once that his dad sent him to get change for their grocery store (I come from a very long line of small grocery store owners). My dad came back with the nickels he had been sent for and when my grandfather counted them up he found one extra, which he sent my dad back to the bank to return. I realize that we tell stories to others, specifically our children and grandchildren, to instill in them the values and social norms by which we intend for them to lead their lives. I love those stories because they give me a feeling for who these men were and why their children (my grandmother and my dad, respectively) had so much love and respect for them.

I am very lucky that I get to have the kind of parents about whom it's really easy to say a whole bunch of nice things. And my dad and my grandmother seem to have felt the same way about their fathers (they did feel the same way about their mothers as well, these are just 2 stories that kind of stick with me and are easy to share). I love how these things can help shape who we are, even though in some cases they are about people far removed from us by generation and time and even location in many cases.

There are such riches in the stories of our parents and grandparents and I fully realize that many times we miss out on the chance to ask what those stories are, probably out of the hubris of youth. I often thought that it would have been wise to ask my paternal grandmother about her stories. She was born in Poland and came here, well to Winnipeg, at the age of 12 in 1926 (I think) with her mother, maybe to start over. She had a lot of painful experiences in her lifetime but I have to believe that there were a lot of good times as well. Even the stories of the challenges she faced though, would have shed so much light on who she became, who she was (and who I knew). Unfortunately I never got up the courage to ask her for her stories.

Also, I realize that I'm very, very lucky to have a family that I know, love and respect. A lot of people don't. I don't think that this is limited to family, though. I think that the stories about your friends are stories about the family you choose and reflect the kind of people with whom you elect to associate.

This long, rambling blog post does have a point, I promise. To me, there is something very valuable about knowing where you come from. I am who I am because of the generosity of my mom's grandfather, the honesty of my grandfather, the tenacity of my grandmothers, my parents' rejection of the way things "should" be and their wild intelligence, my sister's challenging questions, my roommate's love for animals, and (of course) many, many other things I connect with or admire about others (and all of the thoughts and experiences in between). I realize that the sphere of influence of one person is vast and that many people's influence overlaps in one viewer such as myself. Identity is complicated and unique for each person.

I also appreciate that the things I believe in now didn't start with me. I am a feminist because I believe that all people should be equal, regardless of things like gender; ethnic, cultural or religious background; sexual orientation; mental or physical ability; income level; gender expression; and any other factor by which others wish to separate human beings. I am this way, in part, because I know that my grandmothers were both working mothers at a time when that would not have been very popular (from the 40s - although there is definitely an argument that that still isn't popular) and the fact that my dad says that his father opened a grocery store in part because people weren't interested in hiring Jews so he owned his own business. My concern for the environment may come, in large part, from my mother's very conservation-based actions when we were young like growing vegetables and composting; as well as the influence of living in a beautiful natural setting like Bragg Creek, AB when we were little.

I am very thankful for the efforts of my parents and their parents and their parents to create new generations who are better off than they were because I would offer that I have had multitudes more opportunity than any of them. I hope I can make the best of it, to make their efforts worth something to the rest of the world as well. I hope that people of my generation can recognize that the world is unlikely to end with us and it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to make this a richer world economically, socially and environmentally for those who will come after us than it is now. I also hope that that recognition will lead to action on a large scale.

Teach a man to fish....

Well, first, let's pretend that this old saying says "teach a person to fish"..... but all that aside....

Otherwise, I'm watching Secret Millionaire right now and thinking about what these millionaires are trying to do. It is definitely pretty darn inspiring - especially looking at the "average" person who doesn't have the kind of time and money to go to a new community and spend some time getting to know new organizations but those who volunteer in the communities in which they work, live, play, sometimes struggle and try to make ends meet. These volunteers (like the volunteers on the show today) have so much less than so many others (like the secret millionaire on the show) and yet they give what they do have to help make their communities better places for their children and their neighbours.

Now, I think that what they're doing is absolutely beautiful, particularly when there's so much trash (that I enjoy watching.... is this a full disclosure moment?) on TV. And I think that private charity is a beautiful thing also (the "secret millionaire" just gave away $40,000 to a very, very deserving charity). He said, when he gave away one of his cheques, that good things do happen to good people. And I think that good people like him should help make that happen.

That said, I remember learning once that the idea of the very right-wing way that the United States were put together was that the government's role wasn't to help out the people who needed that help the most: that private charities are more apt to help these people out.

Back to the title of this post - I was thinking that, yes, if we teach people to help themselves they will be better off than if we just help them. And that's not saying that these wonderful gifts that these "secret millionaires" and everyday philanthropists shouldn't share what they've been blessed (or whatever word suits you) to have.

I guess my question is, "is it working"?

I don't live in the US, and I think that Canadians are considerably better off than our neighbours to the South (so I really don't know), but maybe it's time to look at making some changes. Doesn't it seem fair that at this point, every citizen should have effective, affordable (or free), accessible health care?

I guess that really what I'm thinking is that sometimes what was a good idea "in the beginning" (even though many would argue that point) may not be a good idea later. I read somewhere recently (I think it was quoted in Transforming Power by Judy Rebick) that neo-liberalism (but this could apply to my thought as well, I think) is like a train that is speeding along tracks and the conductor has fallen asleep with his/her foot on the accelerator - so the train is still speeding ahead but nobody is steering it. I think that's an appropriate metaphor for this - that someone needs to re-evaluate the course of where we're going.

Again, I'm not sure if I came up with any kind of theory or consistent thought, but these were the thoughts going through my mind while watching random Sunday night TV and trying to kick this fever.

Hopefully something to think about.

-L.

Manifesta

I'm just finishing up the book Manifesta, by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. It is an absolute inspiration. It has made me think a lot about who I might be as a feminist. And I realize that it's been two months since my "so what" post about how I won't give up (I gave up for a bit, I realize), but I guess I'm just finding my way a little bit right now. I definitely feel like time is a-wasting though, if I'm ever going to really do something to be who I want to be.

Naomi Wolf would have been 29 when The Beauty Myth was published. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards were both 30 when they wrote Manifesta. Jessica Valenti was 29 when she published her first book. And these, of course, were not any of their first tastes of activism. I feel like I'm behind already.

In a few months, I will be a quarter century old. And, of course, that is still really young. But I feel like I'm just beginning to find out who I am or who I'm becoming and I have little direction. Or at least little real direction.

The other day, reading Manifesta spun me into a bit of a thought-tornado (or something less cliche-sounding). As much as this is probably unwise, I'd like to share some of these raw, unresearched, completely personal thoughts.

Firstly, feminism is a movement. For me, there's no doubt about this. It always has been and it always will be (for me). However, at this point, I don't know what direction this movement is going in. I suppose that it seems that it's going in many different directions. While I think that this is fantastic, because it means that feminism has become more of an every day reality that touches many parts of life for far more women and men than it maybe has in the past. However, it also opens up the movement for a lot of critique (from both inside and outside the movement, in my opinion).

Also, I was thinking about voting. I don't think that many people my age voted in the last election at all, but do women and men vote equally as often? I also wonder how many women still vote the way their husbands or boyfriends do (although that, like many of the comments in this post, have no basis in fact whatsoever).

Another totally random thought that popped into my head was the whole notion of choice. I realize that feminism is very, very anchored in this idea of choice. My take on feminism is that it has always been about being able to make our own choices - independent from our parents, spouses (maybe even brothers, should we have any), communities, political parties, etc. Not just going along for the ride but really taking part in choosing the course of our journies. One might argue that women and girls are at a point where we are more able to make our own choices than ever (and I would agree in general). But do we feel that we are really free to make these choices (e.g. no pressure from outside sources to stay home and take care of children or work harder than men do at paid work (to compensate?), etc). How can we help others feel free to make their own choices, support one another in it, and then take responsibility for those choices. I don't think that means that we can or should ignore our environments' role in the choices we make (of those that are available to us) but that we can still be conscious of what is expected of us (whether actually or given our perceptions).

When regular women look back on their lives (so far) having identified as feminists, what do they think? Did they do what they wanted to? Did they do it how they wanted? What helped them or got in the way? WHO helped them or got in the way?

Who are some Canadian feminists? I answered this question a little bit from an Internet search. I started following Judy Rebick on facebook, but I know that (or, hope?) she is just the tip of the iceberg and that there are a lot of really radical, cool things going on in Canadian feminism. It does raise the question for me, like in many instances, what is the role of the United States on Canadian feminism? Are we all in the same boat? Is there something counterproductive for Canadian feminists (or women in general) in American Cultural Imperialism?

Really my last random thought/set of questions was about where the girls of my generation fit into this whole big picture. When Manifesta came out, I was 13. I was one of the teenage girls that was sometimes referred to in those amazing pages. If the third wave belongs to Gen-Xers, can we take part as well? Are there enough of us (post Gen-X feminists)? What do third wave feminists (Naomi Wolf's "contemporaries") think of us? They're not that much older than we are, they certainly aren't our "mothers" like second wavers were their mothers (in most cases). Second wavers are our mothers too (my mother would have been 14 when Ms. was first launched in 1971). How does it all fit?

Anyways, hopefully I'll have the guts to post here a little bit more often. I think that for people my age, blogging gives us an opportunity that generations before us obviously didn't have - being self-published extremely easily and for free.

The summary to this terribly disorganized post really is this: who am I as a feminist? How can I fit into this movement?

If anyone ever reads this, comments are very, very welcome. One of my favourite people in the world, my friend Meg, once said something like if you want something, throw it out there. Tell the world, sort of, even if nobody ever hears you. This is my plea: help me find my way in this whole thing. Help me become who I want to be. And help that person help the world: the planet, women,

Contributions

I guess I just want to contribute to whatever the big "so what" is. I think that's what grad school was about and what this ridiculous blog was about and why I've spent so much time in my life writing in silly journals in the top drawer of my side table in my journal.

I have a job where I get to write sometimes and even though the topics aren't really of my choosing, I love that. I love sitting in front of a computer and writing and deleting and obsessing over my choice of words. I would like that obsession to be about a subject of my own choosing.

And I realize that there's a reason why I always want to make films when I see one I love. I don't want to be just the audience anymore. I want to be the creator of some of those things that give other people the hunger I feel around inspiring things.

I don't know though, I think it just makes me a little mad about who I've become. I want to write but I want to write about something I care about. I thought McGill was the way to get there. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; just because they won't let me in doesn't mean I'll quit though.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I really didn't want to write this, even though I was certain I would have to. I didn't get into McGill. I'm certain nobody is reading this anyways and that I've told everyone who cares in person.

I guess I had hope for it to happen because I wanted it so much. I may try again next year but I suspect that my grades just won't make the cut no matter what year I apply.

There has to be a way though, right? Don't worry McGill, I'll get there someday.