w^jEWISH
Bulletin
Srn hi}- firitisli Cntiniilna since I'J.iO ii ii i(.n'ins(>hii/lcliii.C(i
$1.00 includes GST FEBRUARY 14,2003/12 ADAR 5763
V
Portraits of a Lady
JCC exhibit evokes images from history/6
KglierBlucalion
The Jewish Learning Institute offers challenging spiritual courses/4
AlVlust-Reail
Author defends herself from serious charge/14
SWARM Is one of 21 performing artists and companies at this year's Chutzpah I festival.
Lifelong search for family
Dancemakers performs a Holocaust work at Chutzpah! 2003.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Award-winning choreographer Serge Bennathan brings the compelling and innovative The Invisible Life of Joseph Finch to Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts next month.
Joseph Finch tells the stoiy of a German violin-maker who, after searching for 53 years, finds the daughter from whom he was separated following their liberation from Auschwitz at the end of the war. The story takes place in Germany, Prague, France and Toronto, where he finally reunites with his daughter. He is 83 years old by the time he knocks on her door.
Based on a real-life event that happened in France few years ago - where a brother living in France was reunited with his sister, who was living in Russia, where she had accidentally been brought after the war - Bennathan told the Bulletin that he "had to write this story." ■
For Bennathan, the most compelling part of Finch's tale is that Finch was forced by historical events to conduct a lifelong search to . find his daughter. Bennathan also wanted to deal with the subject of the Holocaust.
"I thought a lot about bringing a vision of the Holocaust [to the stage], and as a creator it was a challenge that I wanted to face," said Bennathan. "I did not think about if I was using dance or another art form, because it is a challenge in any way you want to talk about it. And we need to talk about it in this beginning of a new millennium, as we go further and further from the events themselves and the witnesses are disappearing."
Joseph Finch premiered in November 2000 at the Premiere Dance Theatre as part of Har-borfront Centre Dance 2000-2001: World Moves. It is one of seven works for which Bennathan has been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding performance..
Bom in France, Bennathan trained in Paris in classical and modem dance before working professionally with Roland Petit's Ballet de Marseille. Prior to his arrival in Canada in, 1985, he directed his ovm company in Cannes for four years. He has been the artistic direc-, tor of Toronto-based Dancemakers sin<» 1990, , When creating a new work, Bennathan said
,,.        Pleasesee CHUTZPAH on page 15.
Movie takes aim at Israel
Film is propaganda, not a documentary, says local critic.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Israel was equated with Nazi Germany, apartheid South Afiica and the Indonesian oppressors of East Timor at a public meeting last week at Langara College. Speakers at the meeting, which was sponsored by the Canada-Palestine Support Network, also defended suicide bombers, called Israel a terrorist state that practices "ethnic cleansing" and called Zionism a "representation of the bankers' interests."
The centrepoint of the event, on Feb. 6, was the screening of filmmaker John Pilger's Palestine is Still the Issue. The film was billed as a documentary, but reflected a completely one-sided view of the Middle East conflict, with Israel depicted as the sole cause of all the problems faced by Palestinians. The 1948 war - which began when the new state of Israel was attacked by all adjacent Arab countries - was recast in Pilger's fihn as being motivated by'Arab reaction to Israeli aggression in forcing Palestinians from their homes. The 1967 • Six Day War was similarly revised to again paint the Arab peoples as victims of Zionist aggression, with the only reference again being to Palestinians forced from their homes.
Suidde bombers are depicted in the film as victims whose murderous acts are driven by "an expression of despair" created by Israeli humiliation. of Palestinians. Israel's various historical offers of a bi-national state were dismissed as Bantustans (puppet states created by the apartheid regime in South Africa to give the appearance of black self-determination) and "stateless states" by Pilger. The violence incited by Palestinian leaders and executed by individual zealots vnll be justified when histoiy is written, the film stated.
"History \vill certainly call it a war of nationd liberation," said Pilger.
Palestine is Still tlie Issue makes no attempt at nuance or balance, despite good production values that make the film appear like a news segment. An example of the black-and-white perspective of the film and its subjects is an employee of the Palestinian min-
istry of culture who, speaking of Israelis, states, "They don't respect anything. They just come and destroy."
Israelis who appeared in the film all expressed shame over their coim-tiys behavior, with the exception of a spokesperson from the Israeh prime minister's oflBce, whose comments defending Israel, in the context of the film, served to make the spokesperson appear comically idiotic.
In his film, Pilger makes a direct comparison between Israeli treatment of Palestinians and the Nazis' treatment of Jews, suggesting that Israelis should have learned from the Holocaust experience.
Anti-American attitudes also permeated the evening. Activists handed out pamphlets linking the Palestinian issue with the looming American conflict with Iraq and Israel was characterized, throughout the evening, as America's outpost in the region.
"In file Middle East, Israel is America's deputy sheriff," said one person in the film. The audience booed when a clip of U.S. President George W. Bush emerged on the screen.
The film described Zionism as the belief that God decreed in the Bible that Jews should have the land of Israel. While this is the view of some Zionists, the film ignored the broad spectnmi of Zionist views that do not reflect the biblically ordained state.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring WiUiam Cleveland, a Simon Fraser University professor of Middle East history; Nora Patrich, a Vancouver artist; and Noha Sedky, a member of the Canadian Arab Justice Committee.
Audience members were also invited to express their opinions. One speaker, responding to Pilger's comment in the film that "Few people have been betrayed so many times as the Palestinians," noted that the Palestinians should place some of the blame on the Arab states, who have used them as a pawn to attack Israel, and on the Palestinian leadership,
Please see FILM on page 2
-aAV jsi^ isan 0S6-902#