Podcast
Yehupetzville with Ralph Benmergui
Hosted by The CJN Podcast Network · ENGLISH
If you're a Jew in Canada, odds are good you live in a big city. But Jews have built communities all across our home and native land, and in this podcast, veteran broadcaster Ralph Benmergui journeys across Canada in search of proud Jews from small places. From Moncton to Moose Jaw, Glace Bay to Thunder Bay, join Ralph as he travels from coast to coast to coast in search of a truly national Canadian Jewish identity.
43episodes
Episodes
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S1E23 - After fleeing Toronto, this artist found inspiration in the Canadian woods—and Israel
Mar 8, 202200:27:06Tap to summarizeAlan Glicksman grew up moving around the Toronto area. But even after graduating from high school, he kept moving around—he took up stints as a dishwasher, garbage collector and postal worker over a period of years that saw him bounce from affordable studio apartments in Toronto to an Israeli kibbutz to the small rural town of Flesherton, Ont. Knowing he was sick of the pollution and chaos of the big city, he finally settled in Owen Sound and dug into his passion for painting. Now with gallery exhibits across the country, including in his hometown's acclaimed Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Glicksman has lived a unique kind of Jewish life, blending kabbalistic practice with artistic expression in snowy solitude. Except he's also lived next door to possible Nazis. (Nobody said living the small-town Jewish life was easy.) Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To learn how to support the show by subscribing to this podcast, watch this video.
Transcribe →S1E22 - Goldie Morgentaler: Keeping Yiddishkeit alive in Lethbridge
Feb 23, 202200:31:52Tap to summarizeGoldie Morgentaler is a literature professor and Yiddish expert who's been active in local synagogues, engaged her university's administration on antisemitic incidents and translated into English the work of her mother, the Yiddish-language poet Chava Rosenfarb. You might assume she lives in a hub of Jewish culture—but you'd be wrong. In 1997, Morgentaler moved from Montreal to Lethbridge, Alberta, where she teaches at the university. The city has perhaps fewer than 20 Jews left, but that hasn't stopped Morgentaler from keeping the spirit of her community alive. Listen as she describes what life is like in a city with virtually no Jews, how she handled a prominent incident involving a Holocaust-denying colleague and how she feels about the trucker convoy blocking the border at Coutts, just an hour south of her home. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E21 - Welcome to Waterloo: A lot of Jewish life for not a lot of Jews
Feb 10, 202200:25:53Tap to summarizeDespite there only being around 1,500 Jews in Kitchener–Waterloo, there are two synagogues—and Jacob Sivak has belonged to both. Sivak has spent 50 years living a Jewish life in Waterloo, raising children, researching its Jewish history and writing for various Jewish publications. With a campus Hillel and active Chabad house, Judaism in KW has never been more popular. It's a positive trend for a community whose shuls have had ups and downs with memberships and inconsistent rabbi tenures—but will it sustain the community in the future? Sivak joins to discuss. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E20 - Can North Bay's decimated Jewish community make a post-pandemic comeback?
Jan 25, 2022Tap to summarizeWhen Belle Kizell moved to North Bay in 1973, she says, the Jewish community comprised at least 40 engaged families. Women belonged to Hadassah and kids went to Hebrew school. By 2015, they couldn't even form a minyan for the high holidays. The story of what happened is a familiar one for listeners of this podcast: shrinking industries led to a population decline, young Jews moving away in search of big-city opportunities. But Kizell is optimistic. With remote work on the rise and North Bay's average house listing still under $300,000, southerners are flocking north in search of a more affordable, more comfortable life. Will it help the city's few remaining Jews? Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E19 - Memories of growing up Jewish in postwar Manitoba
Jan 12, 202200:30:32Tap to summarizePrairie Sonata is a debut novel by Sandy Shefrin Rabin. Based on her own experiences growing up Jewish in Manitoba after the Second World War, the book follows a teenage girl's relationship with a recent immigrant from Prague, who teaches her Yiddish and violin. She joins to discuss her book and personal experiences, including what parts of the book are based on her real life growing up in Winnipeg's vibrant mid-century Jewish community. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E18 - Kabbalat Shabbat on the beach: This is Jewish life on Bowen Island
Dec 8, 202100:24:52Tap to summarizeA spiritual search was part of the reason Aryana Rayne moved to Bowen Island years ago. Judaism wasn't exactly part of that quest, but once she discovered a small Jewish community on the island of 3,600 people—mostly ad hoc gatherings, meeting in people's homes and celebrating potluck holidays, with an emphasis on the mystical side of Judaism—something clicked. She started going to seminars, reading up on her religion and becoming a lynchpin of the community. Today, the Jews of Bowen Island have a driftwood Hanukkah menorah, a formal organizational name and a Torah scroll they purchased off eBay. Rayne joins to discuss life on the island, how she lives a Jewish life in her own way and how the future looks bright for their community. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E17 - Meet the 'Bagel Lady of Niagara', serving up the only true Jewish bagels south of Hamilton
Dec 1, 2021Tap to summarizeFrom Niagara Falls to Grimsby, Port Colbourne to Port Dalhousie, you'd be hard pressed to find authentic Jewish baked goods outside of one young bakery: The Bagel Oven. What began in the basement of a St. Catharines synagogue, and later moved to a remote building off a bumpy rural road in Beamsville, is now a fully fledged Jewish deli in Thorold South, serving up specialty challahs, deli-style cream cheese, smoked salmon and true Montreal-style bagels. Its owners, Jessica and Steven Bretzlaff, join to tell their story of why they moved to Niagara, how they started their business, what makes the perfect bagel and how Jessica became known across the region as the "bagel lady". Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca. Learn about the Bagel Oven at thebageloven.ca.
Transcribe →S1E16 - The perfect storm: How one New Yorker found her way to Newfoundland—and never left
Nov 17, 202100:31:53Tap to summarizeFifteen years ago, Elizabeth Loder moved from New York to Newfoundland for what was meant to be a short meteorology assignment. Fast-forward to 2021: Loder, now married and raising three children in St. John's, is a lynchpin of the local Jewish community—a baal tefillah—while still working as meteorologist and engineer. What has she observed as an outsider welcomed in? How has she brought her knowledge of Judaism to such a small community? How does she handle raising her children Jewishly, when they're surrounded by non-Jews? Loder answers all these questions in this deep dive into Jewish life on the Rock. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E15 - The last native Yiddish speaker of Saint John reflects on the Jewish Maritime exodus
Nov 2, 202100:30:33Tap to summarizeBefore Robert Brym became an esteemed sociology professor at the University of Toronto, he was the only kid in Saint John, New Brunswick, whose first language was Yiddish. Born to a religious mother and atheist socialist father, Brym had to navigate cultural and religious different Judaism while figuring out how Jews assimilated (or didn't) in a small Maritime society. From the 1970s, Saint John's Jewish population has dwindled, as Brym—and other Jewish kids from the Atlantic region—moved to bigger cities for school and work. Brym, today one of the country's foremost experts on Canadian Jewish demographics, understands this exodus all too well, and joins to discuss his upbringing and wider Jewish demographics in small towns and beyond. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
Transcribe →S1E14 - Living the rural life in Uxbridge, Ont.
Oct 20, 202100:28:13Tap to summarizeIt had long been a dream for Charles Karstadt to own a piece of land in his life. And not just a suburban house, but a real plot of earth, where he could farm honey from bees and take hikes in the nearby woods with his partner, Shari Hirschberg. They spent a long time looking for the right place, ultimately landing on a rural home in Uxbridge, Ont. With few public amenities and plenty of natural surroundings, it seemed perfect, even though it was far from their former Jewish community in Toronto. Then the pandemic hit—and suddenly, their decision was vindicated. Credits Yehupetzville is hosted by Ralph Benmergui. Michael Fraiman is the producer and editor. Our music was arranged by Louis Simão and performed by Louis Simão and Jacob Gorzhaltsan. Our sponsor is PearTree Canada, which you can learn more about at peartreecanada.com. This show is a member of The CJN Podcast Network—find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.
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