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Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Today, January 27th marks 80 years exactly since the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration camp.
As time passes and there are fewer and fewer survivors left to tell their stories, it is increasingly crucial that the day is used to remember and commemorate the atrocities committed by the Nazi's during the second World War and learn from that history, so humanity does not repeat it.
For many in the Jewish Community, January 27th has also become a time to reflect on their Jewish identity and celebrate the richness and vastness of the culture and the diaspora.
Here in Winnipeg, we have a strong and vibrant Jewish community and one of the more recent additions to that community and the Winnipeg music scene in general is Canadian Israeli singer, songwriter, artist, and author Orit Shimoni.
For more than ten years Orit Shimoni lived with no fixed address. She had a successful career touring the world performing everywhere from theatres, to Cafe's, to Bars, to Folkfests to backyards and living rooms... All the while her songs with their folksy, blues, country, and jazz influences thoroughly entertaining and engaging audiences all over the world.
Then the pandemic hit, and in the middle of a cross-Canada tour, she was stopped in Winnipeg as the shutdowns took place.
Since then, she has chosen to make Winnipeg her home base. While she still tours, Winnipeg has become a place where she returns to and can hang her hat.
Born in Saskatchewan to an Israeli father and Canadian mother, Shimoni spent her childhood living between the two countries. Vancouver and Calgary when in Canada and Jerusalem when living in Israel. As she explains, “When people ask me what my hometown is, it’s very hard for me to answer that...I don’t know where I am from. And then it just really suited... never knowing how to answer that... to become this nomadic entity because that makes way more sense to me.”
When the pandemic hit and the lockdowns happened, Shimoni found herself in Winnipeg, and since then has embraced the city and her Jewish identity. She also worked hard to use art to provide inclusiveness and pluralism. “One thing I particularly strive for in all my work is not to be insular in a cultural way. The great fortune of being an artist is that it can reach out to all communities and that is really important to me,” says Shimoni.
One of the ways she has done this since coming to Winnipeg has been through a project called. Singing the Stories of Our Elders Project. Shimoni was invited to take part in a project called Stories to Song. This was a project being created from outside the Jewish community and was aimed at pairing up songwriters with senior citizens. Songwriters would interview seniors and then write a song based on what the senior had told them. As Shimoni says, “It was a transformative experience. It was truly an incredible thing to use this skill that I had honed for many years and then use it to give someone else their voice. I fell in love with the process, and thought ‘how do I do more of this?”
Shimoni turned to the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, which gives special project grants for that benefit the Jewish community. As she explains, “I thought ‘there are Jewish seniors here’...and the more I thought about it when I was conceptualizing how I would go about it was...I got to do this amazing thing and witness what these people had to say... wouldn’t it be even more amazing if someone even younger than me was present for it.”
From this seed of an idea, Shimoni recruited teenagers from both inside the Jewish community and from outside the community. The idea of pluralism always being one of the biggest goals of the project. “I thought, ‘what if we brought in two teenagers and one would be from outside the Jewish community and then they can meet and interact and learn and grow and share.’ And so that is what I ended up doing.”
When the project was complete the songs were presented to the community. “They got to hear a song born out of interview that they were present for. I was hoping they would see what art can do. Look at what it can encapsulate. Look how it can move a person. It was just this joyful, joyful thing,” says Shimoni.
One of the other events that Shimoni has taken part in was an incredibly special concert she performed at the Gwen Sector Centre for a group of Holocaust survivors. “It was just poignant. It was just a different level of awareness while I was performing. That these people survived something ...even If I had read about it my whole life, have listened to testimonies... I will never be able to wrap my head around what they have seen. And to have their warm reactions and welcome to me, just meant that much more. It was a very profound experience.”
Shimoni finds the drastic rise in antisemitism we are currently experiencing is alarming. “It’s a very painful thing to watch. Something has gone wrong with the education for sure. There has been a distortion...it is terrifying to see the conspiracy theories go back to what they used to be. This is medieval level antisemitism. I think there is not a Jewish person on the planet who isn't very reactive to that. It is in our DNA to have this vigilance, and it’s justified to be super vigilant because we know what can happen. It’s not an overreaction. We saw what happened. We need to have the right to say that publicly...and when we do, it often gets immediately attacked. I do also think it is critical in larger settings to acknowledge that we are not the only targeted group.”
Shimoni believes that art, music, and poetry are constants that can bring together communities and help build bridges towards a society where all are valued. She is currently working on a project that draws on the traumas of the Holocaust but can still be understood through the prism of diverse cultures. As she explains, "I’ve been writing songs that are specifically informed by the inherited trauma of the Holocaust...but I am writing them in a way that I don’t mention the Holocaust specifically. And I use that imagery that is authentic to my inheritance of trauma... but that I know is directly to other communities who have experiences persecution and cultural violence.”
Orit Shimoni has spent her life being a student of the world. Between her upbringing and her rigorous touring schedule, she has experienced and learned the value of other cultures and what inclusion and love can do. It is exciting that she has made Winnipeg her home base.
Welcome to Winnipeg Orit! We will be looking forward to your future projects!
This interview was made possible with the generous support of the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba.