Wanted in Winnipeg: more Jewish families
Friday, September 6, 2002 | byANDREW MUCHIN
WINNIPEG, Manitoba—Gerry Koffman left a great job in Ottawa, Canada's rapidly expanding capital to come home to Winnipeg, Manitoba's remote and slowly shrinking seat of provincial government.
Wayne Nemy met his future wife, like him a native Winnipegger, in cosmopolitan Toronto. The Nemys lived in Florida before returning to their birthplace.
Gustavo Rymberg left his native Buenos Aires with his wife and two children to relocate to Winnipeg.
The reason, they all say, is that Winnipeg "is a nice place to raise a family" and offers a Jewish community that's welcoming, well-organized and surprisingly cultured.
Yet the city is not retaining its Jews. At its peak in 1961, Winnipeg's Jewish community of 19,376 was Canada's third largest.
Jewish leaders here recognize that unless they reverse the trend of young Jews leaving for Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, this community—rich in Jewish arts, enthusiastic about Jewish education and bold enough to build a showpiece Jewish community campus—will wither.
Rymberg recalls the first time a Winnipeg federation president visited Argentina looking for possible immigrants, in 1996.
Rymberg was worried about a weakening economy and his family's safety. After an exploratory visit, the Rymbergs became the first Argentine family to relocate to Winnipeg.
In 2001, a Jewish delegation traveled from Winnipeg to Buenos Aires to interview 50 families interested in moving to Winnipeg, reports Faye Rosenberg-Cohen, the federation's planning director.
Two dozen Argentine Jewish families have moved to Winnipeg since 1997. "They tell us we talk about the weather too much," says Rosenberg-Cohen, referring to Manitoba's frigid winters and dense summer mosquito clouds.
The Jewish community participates in Winnipeg cultural activities, but its central address is the Asper Jewish Community Campus, a 5-year-old architectural marvel that links four landmark buildings via a modern glass mall.
The mall, known as "Main Street," stretches from the 205-seat Berney Theatre, past the Marion and Ed Vickar Jewish Museum of Western Canada and Holocaust Education Centre and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, past a kosher restaurant and gym, to the Gray Academy of Jewish Education, which features an elementary school and high school.
Jewish culture always has been strong in Winnipeg, which was known in its heyday as the "Jerusalem of the North." Community members operated a Yiddish theater in the Nord Side from 1907 to 1942, hosting touring troupes.
With so much happening, then, why are Jews leaving for other Canadian cities?
The Winnipeg Jewish community is "suffocating when you're young, but maybe when you're older it's all right," says Brian Borzykowski, 22, a lifelong Winnipegger who co-hosts "The Jewish Hour" and contributes articles to the Canadian Jewish News. "It's a good place to grow up. Some of the youth just need to see the world."
Meeting new Jewish singles "is hard," he says. "For the most part, people who are away meet someone. For the most part, everybody leaves at some point."
Take Koffman and Nemy.
Koffman was directing the Jewish Federation of Ottawa when he accepted an offer to head Financial Resource Development for the Winnipeg federation.
Nemy left Winnipeg at age 22 and lived in Toronto, Europe and the United States before returning with his wife to raise a family.
He makes an argument for potential success in appealing to expatriate Winnipeggers.
"I think you have to go away to appreciate it," he says.