For 40 years, islanders Gail Gallander and Lidia Patriasz have thrown Hannukah parties together. These aren’t religious affairs, but rather cultural celebrations continued from fond childhood memories.
Quite independently, Aryana Rayne and her family started their own Passover Seder tradition in the late ‘90s – piecing together the events from what they knew, learning more as new families joined and they expanded the celebrations of Jewish holidays.
On a small island with a strong Christian influence in community events, the families carved out spaces for their own traditions – rooted in Bowenia as much as Judaism. And as the island’s population grows, so does its informal Jewish community and the breadth of local celebrations.
“People who move to Bowen are independent,” says Rayne. “If you are really an observant Jewish person or family, you would stay in Vancouver so you could be close to a synagogue, to a Jewish school – be part of the community there.”
But once people move here, and they have children, there’s often a desire to share the Jewish celebrations of their own childhoods.
Nostalgia
Forty years ago, Gallander and Patriasz moved in next door to one another. Neither of them were (or are) religious but were interested in the cultural side of Judaism.
They had young boys the same age and wanted to celebrate the holidays. In the much smaller Bowen of those days, there weren’t many Jewish families. “We weren’t out there scouting them, either,” says Gallander.
Patriasz was born in Hungary and after the 1956 revolution, escaped to Israel, where she lived for a few years before coming to Canada. “I grew up with Jewish ceremonies and Jewish culture – and that’s what I’m continuing,” says Patriasz – later adding that she’s been to a synagogue only twice in her life.
Gallander grew up in a conservative Jewish household in Toronto. “It’s not the religion as much as it is the culture of the religion that [I] enjoyed. And it was something that I wanted to maintain with my child.”
The two families started with celebrating Hannukah in about 1981, when their boys were two years old, and have kept up the tradition ever since, adding in Passover celebrations in the spring. Another Jewish family moved in nearby and so the celebrations rotate through the three homes. Over the years, they would involve other families and friends– not necessarily Jewish people.
“It really enriched our lives,” says Gallander.
The women also started going into the schools at Hannukah time – each of them independently and into the classes of whichever teachers invited them, bringing the menorah, making potato pancakes and telling the story of Hannukah.
Learning
In the late 1990s, Rayne and her husband had young kids and the family started gathering with five or six others for Passover Seder, which eventually evolved into Friday night Shabbat dinners.
Rayne – whose mother is Jewish and whose father was Roman Catholic but converted to Judaism on his wedding day – didn’t grow up in an observant home. Shabbat dinners weren’t part of her childhood but someone on the mainland introduced the idea.
“You light candles, the family sits around the table…it’s just a nice way to get a family together,” she says. “Gradually, we started inviting some of the families that we knew over and it morphed into a monthly potluck gathering.” They ended up with about 10 families with kids in the one to 11 age range.
“It became a really important gathering.”
Then there’s Passover. Where Christians tend to congregate for Christmas, for Jews, it’s Passover (in the early spring). “Everyone goes home for Passover Seder,” says Rayne. These days, even people who’ve moved off-island return and bring friends with them – there are so many people that they have to cap the event at 55 to 60 people.
Growing
In the early 2000s, a rabbi from Vancouver on her way to Israel, stayed on Bowen for a time. A group of women started asking if Rabbi Nomi Ehren-Lis could teach them more about Judaism and about 10 women started gathering monthly. They started studying Judaism, even Kabbalah – the more mystical aspect of Judaism – with the well-respected rabbi. She became an important figure for the community and those delving into the more religious side of Judaism.
Gallander worked as community school coordinator for many years and when Jewish families moved to the island and asked if there was any local Jewish community – she’d send them Rayne’s way.
As the community grew and changed, Rayne and the rest of the community learned more.
One woman, who had lived in Israel with her husband, inquired after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, celebrations. “I’d never done that, so she showed me,” remembers Rayne.
The new couple brought songs and traditions, and this launched an annual Bowen Rosh Hashanah party with the kids.
“[The community] evolved in its own way,” says Rayne.
It was at a crisis time for one of the members of the local Jewish community in 2002, that Gallander saw the Jewish community solidifying. “We started to do prayer circles and that sort of gathered a fair bit of the Jewish community that was here, together.”
For Rayne, it was the Rabbi Nomi Ehren-Lis’s unexpected death in 2005 that spurred a new chapter for the local Jewish community. Before she died, Rabbi Nomi had written Rayne a letter about her vision of Bowen being a sanctuary for Jewish families in Vancouver – to come for a weekend, to join a Shabbat dinner. She wrote a poem about “Song of the Sea,” (Shirat HaYam) from Book of Exodus.
As Rayne and fellow islander Effron Esseiva were leaving the cemetery following Rabbi Nomi’s funeral, they started talking about formalizing the Bowen Jewish community in their mentor’s honour. “Formalize us informally,” says Rayne. “Because, again, people [who] come here, they’re very independent.”
Rayne recalled the poem.
“So that’s what we named it.”
Shirat HaYam.
At the time the Undercurrent had a weekly ad – “churches on Bowen.” Of course, Shirat HaYam wasn’t a church. So Rayne approached the newspaper and asked about a listing – and the weekly ad became “places of worship,” which it remains to this day.
A Torah for Bowen
Esseiva was (and still is) knowledgeable in reading Hebrew and in chanting and knew how to prepare someone for a bar or bat mitzvah. “He became...I would call it, our unofficial rabbi.”
Esseiva also managed to find a Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible – in Christianity known as the Old Testament) the community could buy. “They’re very, very expensive,” explains Rayne. “It’s all in Hebrew, and it’s all handwritten by a scribe, and it’s all on parchment.”
“It’s considered a very holy object.”
During the Second World War, when the Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, they destroyed the synagogues but kept the valuable Torahs. The scrolls were rescued, restored, and synagogues started buying them. Shirat HaYam purchased what’s believed to be such a Torah. “Some of the writing has faded [on ours], so it’s not considered a kosher Torah for an actual synagogue,” explained Rayne, “but it’s usable for us.”
Esseiva found a seller in Israel through eBay and an on-island dedication for the 200-year-old scroll was held in June 2006.
Formally informal
The informality of the community remains – Friday night Shabbat dinners happen when someone decides to pull one together and sends an email out to the mailing list, says Gallander.
“It isn’t just Jewish people who come to these Shabbat dinners, it’s anyone that’s so inclined or feels some kinship toward Judaism,” says Gallander. “We do do some Hebrew prayers and sing some Hebrew songs we all know that from our childhoods.”
Patriasz, on the other hand, isn’t involved with any of the community groups or events – “My celebration of Jewish culture is completely personal,” she says.
COVID-19 disruption
Of course, for the past couple of years, COVID-19 has interrupted holidays for every religion. Bowen Passover Seder was virtual in 2020 but no one had the heart for such an event in 2021. Yet, the community didn’t disintegrate. Over last summer, Friday night dinners resumed – often at the beach or on people’s decks. “We’re all missing it,” says Rayne.
“We’ve actually created a pretty important community for ourselves.”
She estimates that there are between 15 to 30 families who are part of the more official Bowen Jewish community – some are quite non-religious, like Gallander, and others are more regular synagogue goers, like Rayne. Some attend many events, and others may just come for the Hannukah and Passover parties.
“It’s been lovely,” says Gallander, of watching the local Jewish community grow. “It’s a very supportive group and a very poignant, very lovely time.”
Antisemitism on Bowen
But, antisemitism is an ever present threat. Security, even at Vancouver synagogues, is high during the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, says Rayne. Even having a story such as this one, in the Undercurrent, is a source of discomfort.
“Particularly first-generation Holocaust survivors carry, not just the epigenetic trauma, they carry their parents telling them hide that you’re Jewish; it’s not safe to be Jewish.
“Some people have told me… ‘I can’t get that fear out of my system of revealing that I’m Jewish. I can’t trust what people’s reactions will be.’
“It’s a real concern on the Jewish community,” says Rayne. “So what we’re doing with this [awareness] project is stepping out of a comfortable zone that we’ve created here.”
But this story isn’t coming out of nowhere.
“I experienced an antisemitic incident [in July]. Someone who was also a Holocaust denier,” says Rayne. “That shook me to my core.”
While Patriasz says she’s never experienced antisemitic incidents herself, Gallander says she has a couple of times, which made for quite uncomfortable situations.
Between 2017 and 2019, police-reported hate crimes against Jewish people made up nearly half of the religion-based hate crimes in Canada – more than any other religion, according to Statistics Canada.
After her encounter, Rayne talked with her rabbi, who warned that there is a dangerous rise in antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Rayne talked with the other members of the island’s Jewish community, and after more discussions with her rabbi, came to the idea of visibility and education.
She contacted the Bowen Island Community Foundation about a small grant (which they granted). As well, the Undercurrent places of worship ad had long-since lapsed, so Rayne relisted it, and got in touch with me, asking if I’d be interested in writing an article.
This is the first in a series of three.
