Culturally Jewish The CJN Podcast Network

On December 1, 2023, Charles Officer passed away at age 48. The award-winning filmmaker was revered in the national arts community, having directed documentaries such as Invisible Essence, about the cultural impact of The Little Prince, and The Skin We're In, a film adaptation of author Desmond Cole's popular essay on racism in Canada. His movies were purposeful and personal, tackling topical issues with incisive commentary and deep research.

The 2024 Hot Docs film festival in Toronto will be commemorating Officer's life with a tribute screening of his 2010 film Might Jerome on May 4, including a Q&A panel with some of his industry colleagues. Two friends and collaborators join Culturally Jewish to describe Officer's unique life as a Black Jewish arts worker in Canada: Jake Yanowski, who cofounded the production company Canesugar Filmworks with Officer, and Michael Levine, one of Canada's foremost literary agents.

Credits

Culturally Jewish is hosted by Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Our producer is Michael Fraiman, and our theme music is by Sarah Segal-Lazar. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To support The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt, please consider a monthly donation by clicking here.

Irena Gut Opdyke was a Polish nurse who, during the Second World War, was forced to become a housekeeper for a high-ranking German officer. At some point, she was offered the chance to save a dozen Jewish lives. She agreed, hiding them in a space nobody would think to look—in the German officer's basement.

Later honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations, Irena's story is not very well known. But a group of Quebecois filmmakers is about to change that. Irena's Vow, being released in theatres across Canada on April 19, is a historical drama that marks a rare Canadian-made entry into the Holocaust film genre. Lead actress Sophie Nélisse joins Culturally Jewish to discuss what filming was like and what she hopes audiences will take away.

And before that, hosts David and Ilana explain—with good reasoning—why neither one of them actually watched Irena's Vow... or, in fact, almost any other Holocaust movie. (Hint: it involves generational trauma.)

Credits

Culturally Jewish is hosted by Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Our producer is Michael Fraiman, and our theme music is by Sarah Segal-Lazar. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To support The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt, please consider a monthly donation by clicking here.

When a member of the Jewish community in London, Ont., recently decided to go through with medical assistance in dying (MAiD), it sent shockwaves through the tight-knit community. Some were angry and confused, others were sympathetic and supportive—and others felt mixed emotions, including the father of Jordi Mand, a playwright and screenwriter. Mand discussed the topic extensively with her father (and then her brother, and others), and soon came to realize how controversial the idea of medically assisted death was within Judaism.

The emotional scenario set the stage for her latest play, In Seven Days. It tells the story of a woman who returns home to learn that her father has decided to end his life via MAiD in a week's time, leaving her, their family and even the local rabbi scrambling to try and change his mind before then.

The production debuted at the Grand Theatre in London, and will come to the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto by way of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company from May 4-16, 2024. Ahead of the play's Toronto debut, Mand and director Philip Akin sat down with the hosts of Culturally Jewish for a frank talk about death, life, comedy and the nature of choice.

And before that, the hosts discuss recent controversies in the Jewish arts world, including the poorly worded Oscar acceptance speech by the director of The Zone of Interest and the cancellation of next month's Hamilton Jewish Film Festival.

Credits

Culturally Jewish is hosted by Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Our producer is Michael Fraiman, and our theme music is by Sarah Segal-Lazar. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To support The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt, please consider a monthly donation by clicking here.

On March 5, the biggest comedy festival in the world, Just for Laughs, announced it was cancelling this year's events in its hometown of Montreal and filing for bankruptcy protection. The news shocked international comics and local Montrealers—but Andy Nulman, who co-founded the festival in 1985 and spearheaded its expansion through the 1990s, wasn't entirely surprised. Though he took a step back from the company in 1999 and left entirely in 2015, he'd been hearing of JFL's financial troubles in the media, just as most in-person events had taken a hit since the pandemic.

And yet, as he recounts on Culturally Jewish, The CJN's podcast about Canadian Jewish arts, seeing that the enormous summer festival would be cancelled entirely still blindsided him—and hit him emotionally. In this in-depth conversation, Nulman discusses the global shifts that led to JFL's recent troubles, the way Montreal's Jewish community supported the festival from its earliest days, and why he's optimistic that Just for Laughs hasn't truly had its last laugh forever.

Hear in this episode:


Milton Berle in 1991, who was invited to perform at age 83
Tim Allen's set in 1990, which helped get him Home Improvement
Howie Mandel in 2002, who later led a group that bought the comedy festival in 2018

Credits

Culturally Jewish is hosted by Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Our producer is Michael Fraiman, and our theme music is by Sarah Segal-Lazar. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To support The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt, please consider a monthly donation by clicking here.

Eric and Erin Warner's grandfather lived to the admirable age of 103. And in that time, the Jewish immigrant to Canada saw Toronto change in innumerable ways, from the migration of Jews out of the Ward and Kensington Market to mass communication shifting from the radio to the internet. It's a life's story that Eric, who's worked in music promotion and production since he was a teenager, wanted to tap into—in part to help his own young children understand where their family came from.

He roped in his sister, Erin, to sing on the album, and his longtime friend Jason Craig to help write the songs. The result is a concept album, A Song for Ira, released in February 2024, which debuted with a live show at the Miles Nadal JCC on Family Day. The concept is that two grandparents, Harold and Ruth, are gifted songwriting classes, which they use to write eight folksy tracks about growing up in a bygone Jewish Toronto. Writing about mid-20th century family vacations and longstanding Jewish institutions, the album paints a picture of the past for the benefit of the future.

The Warner siblings and Jason Craig join Culturally Jewish to describe the songwriting process and why they believe writing music is an ideal way to speak to younger audiences.

Credits

Culturally Jewish is hosted by Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Our producer is Michael Fraiman, and our theme music is by Sarah Segal-Lazar. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To support The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt, please consider a monthly donation by clicking here.

Seth Zosky is a massive fan of Kanye West. He owns the shoes, has heard all his songs, and—as a drummer—dove deep into Kanye's innovative use of the retro 808 drum machine. So when Kanye started coming out as an unhinged antisemite in 2023, making ridiculous comments on podcasts and social media about Hitler, spouting conspirary theories and tweeting about going "death con 3 on Jewish people", Zosky was heartbroken.

He decided to transform his emotions into a new production. Working with his close friend, the rapper CJ Capital (who is not Jewish, but also a major Kanye fan), as well as Dan Petrenko and Tracey Erin Smith, both of whom are Jewish theatre creators in the Prairie provinces, Zosky spent a year developing a new play. Pain to Power: A Kanye West Musical Protest debuts at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre on Mar. 9, about a month after Kanye's latest album, Vultures 1, which was just released this week. Pain to Power adopts Kanye's music and reclaims it into a work of art that Zosky believes the multimillionaire rapper would absolutely hate.

He and Petrenko, the artistic director of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, join Culturally Jewish to discuss the origins of the show and their artistic process—which included a trip to Israel in early October 2023 that ended up being cut short when they got caught in Hamas's terrorist attack, hearing missiles exploding over their heads from inside Ben Gurion airport, moments before they caught the last flight out on Oct. 7.

Credits

Culturally Jewish is hosted by Ilana Zackon and David Sklar. Our producer is Michael Fraiman, and our theme music is by Sarah Segal-Lazar. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To support The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt, please consider a monthly donation by clicking here.