Lipton and Dvorkin are named co-presidents of Calgary Chevra Kadisha

by Maxine Fischbein

(AJNews) – The winds of change were evident when Calgary Chevra Kadisha volunteers were saluted at a luncheon held at the Beth Tzedec Synagogue on Sunday, March 9. Front and centre was Immediate Past President Lou Bracey, who has served the Jewish burial society in multiple capacities over 46 years, including nine as executive director and, most recently, five as president.

The highlight of the luncheon was a moving address by Bracey who shared the story of his trajectory from Liverpool, England to Winnipeg and, eventually, Calgary where he and his wife Val – with whom he shared loving thanks – made their home and raised their children Sarah and Nathan.

Bracey had encouraging words for his successors, Harold Lipton and Susan Dvorkin who, in light of Bracey’s retirement were acclaimed co-presidents of the Chevra at the society’s January 23 AGM.

“I have the greatest confidence in both of your abilities to lead, oversee and drive the Chevra to new and valuable achievements. Together with your executive and board you will continue in the drive to maintain our standard and high level of support for the community,” said Bracey, who also saluted the many Chevra stalwarts he characterized as “…the best of Calgary’s volunteer workers.”

Bracey will continue to serve the society in an advisory role and on a couple of committees, said Dvorkin and Lipton.

In recognition of Bracey’s past service, he has been named an honorary chair. Two other long-serving board members who have recently been appointed honorary directors are Herb Rosenberg and Harvey Rabin.

The honorary designations are a great way to ensure continuity and institutional memory in the organization, says Harold Lipton, who points out that honorary members carry the same privileges and rights as sitting board members

“We have very big shoes to fill,” Dvorkin told AJNews in an interview last month during which she and Lipton praised Bracey’s record at the helm of Jewish Calgary’s oldest institution, established in 1904 and incorporated in 1911.

Both Dvorkin and Lipton have many years of experience as Chevra volunteers. Lipton, who has served for 29 years, is a former chair of the men’s Taharah Committee, which is tasked with the ritual preparation of the deceased for burial.

Dvorkin does not recall exactly when she began to volunteer for the Chevra, but believes it was between 15 and 20 years ago.

The first woman ever to serve in the society’s top tier of leadership, Dvorkin views her co-presidency as a logical step after 10 years on the Chevra board of directors. Prior to that, she engaged in the mitzvah of hand sewing tachrichim (shrouds).

The Chevra has in recent years made a concerted effort to increase the number of women sitting on its board.

“When I was asked to join the board I think that Darlene [Switzer Foster] was the only other female, as president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary,” recalled Dvorkin, adding that Deb Katz, Halley Girvitz, Jessica Switzer and Kathie Wainer have since joined the board.

“I take a lot of pride in what we all do,” said Dvorkin, who finds particular pleasure in being there for everyone, “…regardless of their denomination, their affiliation, and their pocketbook.”

“We don’t get involved in the politics. We don’t really get involved in strong fundraising. We just do what we do, and I hope we can continue to do it for another 120 years.”

Like many volunteers, Dvorkin and Lipton have deep family roots at the Chevra. Dvorkin’s great-great uncle, D. A. Dvorkin was among the early leaders of the Chevra and his wife Rose was the first ladies’ auxiliary president. Their grandson, Harris Dvorkin, was later an honorary vice president of the organization.

“It feels very nice to be the third generation in my family to have been involved,” Susan Dvorkin told AJNews.

Lipton followed in the footsteps of his father Norman, a committed Chevra volunteer for decades.

Much as the Chevra is deeply rooted in tradition, the organization has morphed and changed over the years, say Lipton and Dvorkin, especially during Bracey’s tenure as president.

“He really set the wheels in motion,” recalls Dvorkin, adding that Bracey “…wanted the board to be more of a working board.”

Bracey established an executive and working committees and communicated more robustly with the community in the hope of attracting new generations of Chevra volunteers, Dvorkin said.

This was a leap for an organization whose volunteers typically remain anonymous. Ritually preparing the deceased for burial and accompanying them to their final resting place is considered the chesed shel emet or truest act of loving kindness since these are mitzvahs that one who has passed away can never repay. Sincerely believing that the work is its own reward, most Chevra volunteers serve quietly and humbly.

“That’s what the Chevra always was and it’s a wonderful thing,” says Dvorkin, “but it can’t end with us.”

“One of the trending changes is broadening the spectrum of community involvement in the Chevra,” Lipton told AJNews, adding that today’s Chevra volunteers hail from “all streams of Jewish observance and community. It is good because we have a diversity of opinions at the table.”

“It is good, because we have a diversity of opinion at the table,” says Lipton. “That is the biggest change I’ve seen during my time at the Chevra.”

“The old Chevra used to be in the hands of three, four people,” recalls Lipton.

As the community evolves, the Chevra has had to address issues that its founders could never have imagined. Burials of cremains (the remains of individuals who choose cremation) and burial within the Chevra Kadisha Cemetery of non-Jewish spouses are two examples.

“We don’t support cremation,” says Lipton. “If anything, we try to discourage it….That we will now bury cremains is a definite change in policy,” he said, adding that the decision was instituted around the time that the new Chevra Kadisha Cemetery was opened on 37 Street SW, some two decades ago.

Interfaith couples can be buried side-by-side in the Reform section of the cemetery.

The ritual isn’t identical between the Jewish partner and the non-Jewish partner,” says Lipton, “but the eventual burial is together.”

There are some limitations. “We won’t advertise the funeral service for the non-Jewish spouse,” says Dvorkin and, adds Lipton, non-Jewish clergy are not permitted to participate in the burial service.

(It is important to note that the burial of non-Jewish spouses was recently and robustly debated by Edmonton Chevra Kadisha members. Despite vocal opposition by some, a motion to allow the change passed by a wide margin just last month).

These days the Chevra also receives and accommodates requests for partial services, says Dvorkin. For example, some individuals wish to be prepared for burial “according to Jewish rituals and traditions but don’t want to be buried in our cemeteries.”

A volunteer-driven organization, the Chevra has evolved in its mission to serve a rapidly changing community while continuing to respect time honoured tradition. Sometimes, despite its best efforts, the organization has experienced controversy.

For example, a few years back, four community members passed away within one week during which extreme winter weather limited the usual alacrity with which Jewish burials are typically performed.

“We could not open more than one grave in a day, because it took eight hours [to break through the frozen ground],” recalled Dvorkin. “Our hearts broke for the family that had to wait the longest…. When you are grieving and you are told that the funeral cannot take place for five days, it is not the answer you want to hear.”

“Some felt the Chevra did not care,” recalls Dvorkin, adding that nothing could have been further from the truth.

The Chevra handles 45 to 55 burials per year, relying on highly-skilled private contractors to excavate gravesites. The work cannot be successfully handled by casual workers unfamiliar with the site.

“We are fighting certain stereotypes that have existed in the community for a long time,” says Lipton, “One of them being that the Chevra Kadisha is flush with funds and shouldn’t need to charge so much for a funeral.”

In fact, the Calgary Chevra Kadisha lost ground over 20 years due to not increasing its fees for services, says Lipton who adds that Calgary is now in line with Jewish communities across the country.

“We do not have an economy of scale,” says Lipton, adding that most revenues taken in by the Chevra are fees for burials. A second income stream is the sale of interment rights (plots). The third is donations, which typically accounts for less than 10 percent of all revenues, Lipton says.

Donations are a welcome offset as the Chevra self-funds ritual preparation and burial of individuals whose families cannot afford the cost.

The Chevra has made a conscious choice not to do aggressive fundraising, a move leaders fear would put a stumbling block in front of other community institutions that rely on charitable donations.

Occasionally, families do make donations to the Chevra after they have paid for their loved one’s funerals, said Lipton, citing several generous gifts in recent months.

It is a little known fact, but after-lifetime gifts to the Chevra Kadisha can be earmarked by donors via the Life & Legacy program, an initiative of the Calgary Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Foundation of Calgary. While the Chevra is not a partner agency, Life & Legacy donors may designate funds to any registered charity in Canada.

The Chevra applies for federal and provincial grants for capital and security enhancements (grant writers would be welcome volunteers, say Dvorkin and Lipton) and prides itself in the investments it has made over the years which have helped on a number of fronts including perpetual care at the cemeteries.

This is critical, especially when one considers that Calgary’s first Jewish burial site at Erlton Cemetery has no new funds coming into it now that every plot has been sold. Funds will be needed in perpetuity in order to facilitate snow removal, landscaping, repairs and the like at both Erlton and the 37 Street SW Chevra Kadisha Cemetery which, according to Lipton and Dvorkin, has enough capacity for one century if not more.

Dvorkin says that the Chevra has a great relationship with the developers that are creating residential neighbourhoods in proximity to the 37 Street SW cemetery.

Other relationships valued by Dvorkin and Lipton are those with Calgary’s rabbis – who share a common commitment when it comes to supporting and publically acknowledging the work of the Chevra.

Also close to their hearts are the 18 Calgary Chevra Kadisha board members, six of whom serve on the executive.

“When you look around our board table, you are looking at 500 years of experience,” says Dvorkin. “Not a lot of boards can say that. Certainly you want to have new and younger voices, but the commitment of hundreds and hundreds of years of service to one organization says a lot.”

“Yet, when you look around the table, the average age is a bit older than we’d like it to be,” says Lipton.

Community members ­­– especially young ones who think they are a good fit for the Chevra – are urged to contact either Dvorkin or Lipton for a conversation.

Particularly when it comes to taharah, volunteers are not cast immediately into the deep end, says Lipton, who adds that training and gradual integration into the process are typical.

The Calgary Chevra Kadisha is one of very few in North America that continue the time-honoured tradition of cutting and hand sewing tachrichim thanks to a circle of volunteers. The hand sewing is easy to learn and veteran sewers are the first to reassure fledgling volunteers that Chevra customers have never been known to make returns.

Volunteers are needed for a wide variety of other tasks including making up minyanim for the funerals of individuals who do not have enough family and friends to guarantee the required ritual quorum of 10. Other possibilities for volunteers include filling graves, providing IT, HR, legal and medical expertise, writing grant applications…and the list goes on.

People can contribute on an ongoing basis or as the need arises.

“We have tried vigorously to recruit a part-time back-up shomer,” says Dvorkin, adding that this position –  for which there is compensation – involves sitting in proximity to the deceased and reciting Tehillim (Psalms) until the taharah and funeral.

“What we do is out of love and respect for those who went before us,” says Lipton. “The Chevra will only continue to function if there are enough people there to support it.”

Anyone who can hold that close to their heart can contribute to their community in a significant and meaningful way by becoming a Chevra Kadisha volunteer.

“The Chevra will only continue to function if there are enough people there to support it.” Lipton said.

This hope, says Lipton, was expressed by Bill Aizanman according to a eulogy by one of his daughters when the long-serving former Chevra Kadisha president was laid to his eternal rest last year.

Asked why he had dedicated so much of his life to serving the Chevra Kadisha, he simply stated that he always hoped the volunteers of the Chevra would be there to ensure that he was buried according to time-honoured Jewish traditions.

Lipton urges members of the community to speak frankly with their adult children about the ways that they can honour those who have gone before them.

Quoting Joni Mitchell’s famous song Big Yellow Taxi – “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Lipton hopes that a new generation will rise to the occasion.

During his March 9 address to Chevra volunteers, Lou Bracey paid tribute to his late father who cried at a Shabbos Kiddush in his honour just before he left Liverpool to begin a new life in Canada.

“Don’t forget your Yiddishkeit,” was his father’s admonition.

After years of devotion to the community – including close to a half-century of service at the Chevra Kadisha – Lou Bracey has certainly fulfilled his father’s ethical will.

Chevra leaders are counting on a new generation to likewise honour their parents and their community by stepping up to participate in a mitzvah like no other.

Community members interested in serving the Chevra Kadisha are urged to contact Susan Dvorkin or Harold Lipton. Messages can be left for them at the Chevra, 403-244-4717.

Maxine Fischbein is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.