November 27, 2017: The lost – and found – Jewish music of Germany before the Holocaust

By Michael Regenstreif

One of the most profound Jewish cultural events I’ve witnessed since moving to Ottawa a decade ago took place in a Christian church.

It was a concert on November 9, the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass – when Nazi brownshirts conducted murderous and devastatingly destructive antisemitic pogroms throughout Germany and Austria.

Hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed on Kristallnacht, among them the Hebräaische Buchhandlung (Hebrew Bookstore) which was also the headquarters of Hirsch Lewin’s Semer record label.

From 1933 until 1938, Lewin had prolifically recorded German Jewish singers and musicians with repertoires ranging from Yiddish folk and theatre songs to classical music, popular and art songs, opera, and much more. Ironically, he also recorded musicians and singers from pre-state Israel who travelled to Berlin because there were not yet any professional recording studios in the Holy Land – so some of the earliest Israeli folksongs were recorded in Nazi Germany.

All of the masters that Lewin had produced as well as his stock of records were destroyed on Kristallnacht and presumed to be lost forever.

In 1992, German musicologist Rainer E. Lotz began what turned out to be a decade-long, worldwide quest to find copies of the entire Semer catalogue. Eventually he was able to assemble “Beyond Recall,” an 11-CD boxed set that includes more than 14 hours of Jewish music recorded in Berlin in the 1930s on the Semer label, as well as a 516-page hardcover book.

In 2012, the Berlin Jewish Museum commissioned Alan Bern, a renowned American Jewish musician living in the German capital, to put together a contemporary band to perform modern adaptations of music from the Semer recordings. Bern recruited other Jewish musicians living in Germany, as well as from the U.S., for what became known as the Semer Ensemble.

This month, the Semer Ensemble performed concerts in three U.S. and three Canadian cities. The Ottawa concert took place at Southminster United Church in Old Ottawa South.

The concert – fittingly titled “Rescued Treasure” – was spectacular. Virtually every piece in the long program was a highpoint. Bern and the other virtuoso musicians and singers – including Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics – performed brilliantly. There were moments of great sadness in the music as well as moments of great humour, and great spirituality in what was, in essence, a celebration and remembrance of the vibrant Jewish culture that existed in Germany before the Holocaust – and which is enjoying a substantial and meaningful revival today.

I’ve attended concerts in churches on many occasions – including several at Southminster United. But it was odd to hear this distinctly Jewish music – some of it religious – in a sanctuary filled with Christian iconography.

And of all the concerts I’ve ever attended in churches, this one surely had the most Jewish of audiences. I recognized what must have been several hundred members of the Jewish community among the hundreds more in the sold-out church.

However, many Orthodox Jews would not, or would be reluctant to, attend an event taking place in a church. So, although the Southminster United Church folks were completely welcoming, the very nature of the venue itself was unwelcoming for some Jewish people. For that reason, I wish the Ottawa concert – like the Semer Ensemble’s other North American concerts – had taken place at either a Jewish or nonreligious venue. The Montreal concert, for example, was at Shaar Hashomayim, an Orthodox synagogue, while the Toronto concert was at the Toronto Centre for the Arts.

The Semer Ensemble has a CD, also called “Rescued Treasure,” that includes many of the pieces they performed in Ottawa. It is well worth seeking out.

November 13, 2017: Census data needs to be reliable

By Michael Regenstreif

According to data from the 2016 census released late last month, there are now 143,665 Canadians who define their ethnicity – in whole or part – as Jewish. This represents a decline of well over 50 per cent from 2011 when 309,650 Canadians reported their ethnicity as Jewish in the National Household Survey.

“Obviously,” as Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel told the Canadian Press (CP), “the Jewish community didn’t shrink by more than half in the past five years.”

Indeed, Jewish identity is a complicated matter and it’s not just a matter of religion. There is also Jewish ethnicity – which might manifest in historical or cultural identification, and in concepts of Jewish peoplehood, Jewish nationhood, and Jewish community.

While our aging population and low birth rate may have resulted in some decline in Canada’s Jewish population in the five years between 2011 and 2016, there could not have been the kind of statistical change we see in the 2016 numbers published by Statistics Canada.

So, how to explain the huge difference?

The problem it seems was in the methodology used to determine ethnicity. While everyone filling out a census form writes in their ethnicity (or ethnicities), ‘Jewish’ was not among the 28 ethnicities listed as possible suggestions in 2016. ‘Jewish’ was among the suggestions listed in 2011.

It’s only natural that many – if not most – people filling out the form will look at the suggestions and choose an answer from among them. And that can be especially problematic for measuring the Jewish population in census years like 2016 when religion is not even measured. (Religion is measured in the census every 10 years and is scheduled to be measured again in 2021.)

How did Statistics Canada determine which ethnicities to list as possible suggestions on the form?

Demographer Charles Shahar, the chief researcher at Federation CJA in Montreal, explains that 20 of the choices represented the ethnicities which received the most responses in the 2011 survey, four represented examples of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and four more were chosen as examples representing different geographic regions from around the world.

‘Jewish’ was the 22nd most popular response to the 2011 survey so was left off the list of suggestions for 2016 (Shahar notes that each of the four examples chosen to represent geographic regions – ‘Lebanese,’ ‘Mexican,’ ‘Somali’ and ‘Colombian’ – all had smaller responses than ‘Jewish’ in the 2011 survey).

And if Statistics Canada uses the top 20 from 2016 to determine the suggestions for 2021, ‘Jewish’ will certainly not be included as that response fell to 47th place among Canadian ethnicities in the obviously skewed 2016 census.

Accurate census numbers are a vital tool for long-term planning. Community organizations, governments of all levels, school boards, universities, hospitals, social service agencies, transportation boards and many other bodies rely on accurate census data to help determine how they serve their communities and clienteles.

Clearly, the deeply flawed 2016 numbers are not useful to Jewish community organizations – including federations such as the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – that rely on the data to formulate policy and make plans in such areas as education and assisting vulnerable segments of the community.

According to Shahar, “The 2021 census ethnicity question must include ‘Jewish’ as a sample choice in order for the question to accurately identify Jews… Otherwise the census will lose its usefulness as a primary source of demographic information.”

This is something that CIJA has quickly prioritized in the face of the 2016 numbers.

“Our goal is to propose constructive reforms to the government in order to improve the census and rectify this critical shortcoming,” said Fogel in a statement provided to the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

The point of providing examples on the form is to help Canadians understand the kinds of possibilities they can include when responding about their ethnic or multi-ethnic identities on the census form. And because Jewish ethnicity and identity can be a more complex matter than ethnicities like Italian or Greek, it is vital that ‘Jewish’ be given as an example on future census forms beginning in 2021.

Census data needs to be reliable. At least in one area, the 2016 census results are anything but.