WINNIPEG — When people learned that Canada Sheli was a business rather than a non-profit organization, they stopped supporting its programs and dances for Israeli immigrants, according to community organizers and Yossi Perlman, who now runs rival dances.
Until last spring, Canada Sheli, founded by Ron East in 2006, had been arranging programs that were co-sponsored by Jewish organizations that thought Canada Sheli was a non-profit group.
Bob Freedman, CEO of the Jewish Federation, and Gayle Waxman, executive director of the Rady JCC, both told The CJN last spring that they had always “assumed” that Canada Sheli was a non-profit organization, which was why they had agreed to co-sponsor events with them.
However, Ron East told The CJN at the time that Canada Sheli was not registered as a charitable organization and was “not a non-profit organization.” He indicated that Canada Sheli had always been registered as a business name by Shirli Vilenski East, his wife.
Canada Sheli also used to put on dance parties for Russian Israeli immigrants, but it ceased doing so last spring, after Perlman, a new immigrant from Israel, began putting on rival dances.
The community learned that Canada Sheli was a business and lost faith in the group after it put on a dance party, under the name EOR Productions, last Passover, featuring a “Magic Show plus Sex Toys 101,” with “games, prizes, display, education and more, courtesy of It’s My Pleasure,” a store that sponsored the dance.
The dance with sex toys was also sponsored by Desserts Plus, a store that carries kosher Israeli food products.
When contacted by The CJN, Barbara Reiss of Desserts Plus said she knew nothing about the dance having sex toys. “Needless to say, if I had been told about that by Ron [East] I would not have sponsored this dance,” she said.
East had teamed up with Michael Cantor, a new Russian Israeli immigrant, to put on the dances under the name EOR Productions, whose website said it was “a division of Canada Sheli.”
EOR no longer puts on dances, Perlman said in an interview. “The last one they had was last May 2009, but ever since the Jewish community learned of their party with sex toys, I don’t think people wanted to sponsor their dances,” he said.
Perlman decided to put on the rival dance parties after learning that East and Cantor were doing this for profit. Until then, Perlman had been a Canada Sheli volunteer with East and Cantor at two previous dance parties.
He said he wanted to become a business partner with East and Cantor when he realized they were running their dances as a business, not as volunteers. When this didn’t materialize, Perlman decided to compete with them in organizing parties catering to Russian Israelis.
He teamed up with Sofia Barklon, who immigrated to the city in 1990, to put on rival dances, and has continued to have these parties once a month.
He noted that he and Barklon had “made a little profit’ with their last party, enough that they intended to carry on with their monthly dances.
“We have been getting sponsorship from different businesses and members of the Jewish community. We had about 160 people to our last dance, which had both new immigrants and other Jewish Winnipeggers.”
There are now over 2,000 adult Russian Israeli immigrants in the city.
Canada Sheli used to put out a regular monthy online newsletter sent to an e-mail list of about 1,000 members of the Jewish community, mostly new immigrants. Since Canada Sheli stopped doing this, no one else in the Jewish community has taken on the project. It also used to organize Israeli movie nights.
Others, such as the Rady Jewish Community Centre, are now putting on programs designed to appeal to the Israeli immigrant population.