Short Take
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Sophie Waldman honored
Vancouver ORT members invite you to join them for dinner in support of the ORT Scholarship Fund, to honor Sophie Waldman and to welcome B.C. ombudsman Howard Kushn-er. Special guest Kathleen Crook, president of ORT Canada, will also be present.
A Holocaust survivor, Waldman worked as a pharmacist in Poland and Germany, where she married her late husband, Isaac, a director and teacher at an ORT School.
Upon arriving in Vancouver in 1951, she studied medical technology, headed the neurophysiological department at St. Paul's Hospital for 25 years, lectured at BCIT, and was a founding member of the B.C. Gerontology Association.
An active participant in the High School Holocaust Symposium, she helped organize the Warsaw Ghetto memorial observances and established the Sophie Waldman Endowment for Holocaust Education at UBC. She is a strong supporter of Jewish institutions, medical research programs and educational institutions. Her greatest joy was in establishing the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver honoring the memory of her husband.
Kushner, BSc, LLB, LLM, British Columbia's ombudsman, has a strong constitutional and administrative law background. The Edmonton native was director of legal services in the Yukon and director of family law and acting director of constitutional law in Alberta. He has appeared at the Supreme Court of Canada on constitutional cases, and is a member of the Law Society of B.C. He has significant experience as an educator and lecturer at UBC, the University of Alberta in Edmonton and Yukon College, and he has presented lectures and published articles on administrative and constitutional law.
The ORT dinner takes place Wednesday, June 21, at Schara Tzedeck synagogue. Reservations are required by June 2. □
Maccabi tryouts begin
The 16th Maccabiah Games are set for July 16-26,2001, in Israel, but the tryouts have already begun. Maccabi Canada is responsible for selecting the Canadian delegation to the World Maccabiah Games and they are now accepting applications \ from interested athletes.
According to Allen Gerksup, national athletic chair and head of the selection committee, "Canada will be sending a contingent of 350 or more to the games. We have selected the majority of our coaches, managers, medical staff and chaperones. Applications for athletes who are interested in representing Canada at the games are • now available. We intend to select our teams earlier than ever and trials are set to take place during this summer."
Open competition is expected to include Canadian athletes in the following sports: hockey, badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, fencing, golf, gymnastics, judo, karate, lawn bowling, rowing, sailing, squash, swimming, tae kwon do, tennis, 10-pin bowling, track and field, triathalon, archery, body building, bridge, mini-football, half marathon, rhythmic gymnastics, rugby, Softball, table tennis, water polo and wrestling.
Canadian juniors - bom in 1985,1986 or 1987 - are expected to compete in baseball, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, squash, swimming, tennis, track and field and volleyball.
Canadian masters competition - age categories vary kom sport to sport - are expected to include golf, squash and tennis. Disabled athletes will be ^le to compete in tennis and swimming. Each sport is conditional on the participation of four countries.
For more information about the Maccabiah Games, trials or to receive an application, please visit Maccabi Canada's Web site at www.total.net/-maccabi, call the national office at (514) 483-5503 or e-mail maccabi@total.net. □
Lohns honored by SFU
Simon Fraser University president Jack Blaney, right, congratulates Dr. Jack Kowarsky, left, and Loyd MacNicol, trustees of the Earl and Jennie Lohn Foimdation, following lie recent official opening of the Earl and Jennie Lohn policy room at the Harbor Centre campus in downtown Vancouver. The room, which seats students in tiered semi-circles, offers a direct Internet connection at each place.
The Lohn policy room is the largest instructional space in the xmiversity's new Technology, Innovation, Management and En-trepreneurship Centre, which brings together the high-tech related teaching and research activities of several SFU faculties, Kowarsky is a member, and former chair, of the Simon Fraser board of governors. The Lohn Foimdation is a long-time supporter of the imiversity and its programs. □
Caregiving and outreach
Two local organizations are offering an event for people who want to learn more about reaching out to support their own families and others in the community. Beth Israel synagogue's bikkur holim committee, along with the Jewish Family Service Agency, will present Caregiving and Outreach, a one-day seminar on Sunday, June 4, from 9:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Topics will include Spiritual Dimensions of Reaching Out, discussed by Rabbi Charles Fcinberg; Personal Needs and the Life Cycle, with Gisi Levitt and Lee Simpson; Haw Caregiving Help Healing, by Robert Fredman and Marilyn Hooper, How Do You Listen? with Yuval Bergen What Do You Say? with Feinberg and Sylvie Epstein; and Work of the Bikkur Holim Committee, with Epstein and Marilyn Glazer.
The conference fee, which includes a light breakfast, is $15, Call Beth Israel at 731-4161 for more information, □
Annual Na'amat event
Vancouver Na'amat is in the midst of its annual Spiritual Adoption Campaign. The event began May 15 and runs imtil June 15. A highlight of the campaign is a celebration of Na'amat's 75th anniversary, which will feature Erika Bloom as guest speaker at a limcheon Sunday, June 11, at noon. Bloom is the immediate past-president of Na'amat Canada and has held many positions on the board of Na'amat's Montreal chapter and national body, since joining the organization in 1962.
Bloom's remarkable life began in Vienna at the outbreak of the Second World War, Her family fled to Shanghai where they stayed imtil the 1949 communist takeover. After that, they moved to Israel before immigrating to Canada in 1953,
Tickets are $15 per person and can be obtained by calling the Na'amat office at 257-5177,
Na'amat is the oldest women's rights organization in Israel and provides funding for 60 per cent of Israel's child care aid. □
Society to house photo collection
T
he Jewish Historical Society is pleased to an-novmce the acquisition of the Fred Schiffer pho-
FredSchiffer
tographic collection, to be housed in the Nemetz Jewish Community Archives.
Schiffer, who was self-taught in photography, was bom in Vienna but emigrated to Argentina in 1948. Due to political upheaval in the country, Schiffer relocated to Vancouver 10 years later. As he was starting out, vmknown in Vancouver but familiar with photographing society's elite, Schiffer landed a chance assignment photographing then-premier WAC, Bennett and his associates.
Schiffer's career in Vancouver took off and he gained international prominence as the sole photographer at the 1971 wedding of Margaret Sinclair to then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Among his Vancouver clientele were musicians John Avison and Sergiu Comissiona, newsmen Jack Webster and Alan Fotheringham, and architect Arthur Erickson, Schiffer was also popularly engaged as the portrait and familial photographer for many members of Vancouver's Jewish community,
Schiffer's sparely lighted, beautifully composed, but relaxed and honest portrayal of his subjects, in dramatic black and white, placed him in the top ranking of portrait photographers. His photographs document British Columbia's business, political and social elite of the time and for that he received due acclaim,
Schiffer died at 82 at his Vancouver homo on Nov, 6,1999, □