Diaspora ConcernsOnce again, we’re talking

about who’s a Jew / 6

Coming To JerichoChoosing SurrogacyMore people are having

others carry their baby / 6

Ihave always loved the thrillyou feel while creating yourown project, seeing it growand being responsible for the

outcomes – and the satisfaction youfeel while convincing a stranger to givehis or her resources (time or money)for your product,” said Yonatan Avra-ham, student ambassador of HUstart,Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s entrepreneurship centre, about whatexcites him about being an innova-tor and entrepreneur.

Avraham is one of four speakerswho will participate in Jerusalem ofGold: Capital of Innovation & Tech,which will take place on July 16 at theJewish Community Centre of GreaterVancouver. The event is being hostedby Canadian Friends of the HebrewUniversity, the Jerusalem Foundationand JCCGV. Avraham will be joined byLior Schillat of Jerusalem Institute forPolicy Research; Maya Halevy ofBloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem;and Tamir Huberman of Yissum, HU’stechnology transfer company. The Jewish Independent ’s interviews withSchillat and Halevy appeared in lastweek’s issue (see jewishindepen-dent.ca/jerusalem-a-high-tech-hub).

“All of the speakers are coming fromIsrael especially for this tour in West-ern Canada. We will be in Vancouveron July 16, Calgary on July 17 and Ed-monton on July 18,” said Dina Wach-tel, Western region executive directorof CFHU, of the tour, which celebratesthe 50th anniversary of the reunifica-tion of Jerusalem.

“Tamir is going to give a talk on Fri-day, July 14, at Simon Fraser Universi-ty titled The Power of Social Networks:Boosting the Marketing of Innovations,organized by Fred Popowich, execu-tive director of Big Data Initiative at Simon Fraser University,” she said. “Partof our mandate is to create these livingbridges between Hebrew U and our local universities; hence, this is part ofthis initiative.”

Huberman is Yissum’s vice-presi-dent of business development and director of information technology. Atthe JCCGV, he will talk on Marketing Innovation: Changing Israel and the World.

In the press material, Hubermannotes, “As the only university in Israelwith a school of agriculture, researchin non-GMO hybrid seeds at HebrewU is changing the way millions of peo-ple eat now and into the future.” He also notes that Mobileye, which

recently sold to Intel for $15.3 billionUS, was founded by HU Prof. AmnonShashua.

Yissum “operates on a royalty-basedmodel which channels proceeds fromsuccessful products back to the re-searchers, their labs and the universi-ty itself,” he explains. It also generatesfunds “by attracting corporations tocollaborate with Hebrew Universitylabs to find the answers the business-es are seeking.”

About what B.C. (and other) univer-sities could learn from HU, Hubermantold the Independent, “I believe that thetop lessons are how to be more effec-tive and how to remove barriers for do-ing business. In most cases, tech transfercompanies around the world are[viewed] as a bureaucratic entity thatcomplicates things. The greatest lessonis making adaptations that would makethings simpler for the companies thatwant to do business with us…. The sec-ond lesson is the realization that, foreach new technology, there either hasto be someone in the world that wouldbe interested in acquiring a licence, orsomeone in the world that knows thetechnology does not have a chance. Itis the ‘job’ of the tech transfer to findthat ‘someone’ and, from my experi-ence, the best way to do that is by using social networks. The revolutionof social media allows getting fast repliesfrom people all around the world,

Have you ever taken part in an aerobicsclass and wondered how many of thewomen in it were trying to lose weightto get a boyfriend back? The sad truth

is, there are probably many, eagerly trying any-thing to return to the way things were, even if theway things were wasn’t all that great.

Bittergirl: The Musical takes aim at countlessbreakup truisms from the perspectives of three dif-ferent women, reminiscent of the sharp wit inMom’s the Word and the relationship charades ofSex in the City. Their varied responses to beingdumped are hilariously insightful.

The progress of the play loosely follows thefive stages of death: denial, anger, bargaining,depression and acceptance. The stages of thebreakups are denial (he made a mistake), sec-ond-guessing (I could have done something dif-ferently), manipulation (I’m going to make himlove me), reflection (I should have seen the warn-ing signs) and acceptance (I’m over him, I’vemoved on).

The three women – played by Lauren Bowler,Katrina Reynolds and Cailin Stadnyk – are knownonly as A, B and C, as though these trials and tribu-lations are those that belong to every woman,not a specific person. Jewish community mem-ber Josh Epstein plays D, all three of thedumpers – the husband who wants to join theRCMP, the live-in partner who just “has to go”and the boyfriend who’s lost his “magic.”

Epstein delivers the stereotypical reasons whyhe needs to get out of each relationship: “I feeltrapped,” “I can’t give you what you want” and theridiculous “We’ve got to be birds flying higher.”

The lame rationales elicit howls of laughter atthe familiarity, especially when one of the womeninitially thinks that the “talk” her boyfriend wantsto have will lead to a proposal.

Not surprisingly, the women stand there,stunned into silence, not demanding further ex-planation, but meekly mumbling things like, “Iunderstand,” even though they don’t – anotherconventional reaction it is sadly not surprising tosee depicted.

After their men leave, the women think aboutwhat they might have done differently to savetheir relationships – “Maybe if I wore plum eye-shadow,” “Maybe if I didn’t talk to my mother somuch” and “Maybe if I worked out more.” Thislast statement segues into an hysterical scene ofthe three women working out with various giz-mos and in different types of classes in a des-perate bid to get in shape and win back their men.

IndependentJew shFormerly the

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Please see TECH on page 2

Marketing of technologySpeakers will discuss Jerusalem as a tech hub.CYNTHIA RAMSAY

PM 40051198

Bittergirl is seriously funnyMusical skilfully pokes fun at the clichés of breakups.BAILA LAZARUS

Si Kahn plays at this year’sVancouver Folk Fest / 7

Please see BITTERGIRL on page 2

Tamir Huberman of Yissum is oneof four speakers who will be

participating in Jerusalem of Gold:Capital of Innovation & Tech on

July 16.

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In Bittergirl, Cailin Stadnyk, Katrina Reynolds and Lauren Bowler play women who have just beendumped by their boyfriends – maybe they can get back their men if they lose some weight?

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even if you’ve never met them.”Huberman has always loved in-

novation and, he said, “it was a bigdream of mine to be an inventorand work with new inventions.”

While working for the companyMedis from 1996 to 2002, he wasexposed to the world of patentsand the process of writing patentsas an inventor. “After my own ex-perience as an inventor,” he said,“I knew I had to find a place thatworks with new patents at a mas-sive scale.”

It was his “strong passion fornew patents and ideas that wasthe top reason for joining Yissum,”he said. “Second was the oppor-tunity to work with some of themost brilliant researchers in theirfields. Third was my realizationthat there was something missingat the time before I joined Yissum,which had to do with the very lowuse of the internet in order to ex-pose the technologies from theuniversities to the world.

“Before I arrived at Yissum, Imade a simple search using freely

available patent databases andsaw that only a small fraction ofthe patents I found [were] on thetech transfer websites. When I realized this, I had a vision ofchanging how tech transfer com-panies worked…. My dream materialized when I created thefirst portal for all the technologiesat Yissum and later created theITTN website (Israel TechnologyTransfer Organization). ITTN wasthe first website in Israel that allowed all of the inventions fromacademic institutions in Israel tobe found in one central portal.”

He added, “I believe that thereis a lot that can be done to makea better and faster connection be-tween companies seeking talent orinnovation to the offerings of uni-versities…. [B]uilding a portal thatconnects more universities in Israeland the world could help make thatmatching much more efficient.

“Another realization is that techtransfer companies traditionallyshowcase technologies and I believe that this is not the best approach…. [T]he portals shouldfocus on the researchers and theircapabilities, rather than just thepatents that a small portion of theminvented. We have multiple exam-ples of companies that were inter-ested in researchers that we did noteven know [because] they neverhad any patents.”

One of the jobs of HUstart – ofwhich Yissum is part, along withHU’s science faculty and businessschool – is to provide “practical ed-ucation, support, mentorships andconnections needed” for studentsand others “to become effective entrepreneurs.”

Avraham is a third-year physicsstudent at Hebrew U and is in thefirst cohort of the new Physics andEntrepreneurship program, whichconnected him – during his sec-ond year of study – with his busi-ness partners. Avraham and fellow

students Michael Levinson andTom Zelanzy co-founded the start-up Gamitee, which “links socialmedia and shopping websites,making it possible for friends toeasily invite others to join them ina shopping experience.”

Avraham has other ideas, suchas one for an “infant sleeper thatmonitors a baby’s vital signs, a tech-nology that could potentially pre-vent SIDS.” And he and his wife –who is an archeologist – also run a tutoring business. In Vancouver,he will speak on The Making of a Serial Entrepreneur.

“I think they have a lot of sim-ilarities,” he said about physicsand building a tech start-up. “Inboth, you need to solve complexquestions and problems that arecomprised of several independentfactors. Both of them are profes-sions that people rarely choose.And they are both very, very hardto understand. I think my physicsbackground [increased] my rangeof abilities needed [to be] an entrepreneur.”

Jerusalem of Gold: Capital ofInnovation & Tech is open to thepublic. Tickets are $45, though students who register at the CFHU office can receive a free ticket. Fortickets and the speakers’ bios, vis-it cfhu.org, email vanc@cfhu.org orcall 604-257-5133. �

TECH from page 1

Cover Stories

The women also reflect on thewarnings signs they missed. Hewears socks with sandals. He criesat Celine Dion songs. He growlsduring sex.

Especially comical is a scenewhere the women run into friendsand they are forced to admit theywere dumped. The standard,“You’re better off without him” or“If you guys couldn’t make it work,what chance do the rest of ushave?” hit the mark on how insen-sitive people can be, much to theenjoyment of the audience. Therapid-fire delivery of the lines, thewomen playing off each other bril-liantly, is a sight to see and hear.

As the musical progresses, clas-sic girl-group songs of the 1960sand ’70s complement the dia-logue. Thinking about their firstdates leads into “And Then HeKissed Me.” The initial breakupsprompt a rendition of “Mama SaidThere’d Be Days Like This.” Whenthe women hope they’ll have achance to renew the relationship,they sing “When Will I See YouAgain?” And who hasn’t felt thedifficulty of moving on becausethere’s “Always Something Thereto Remind Me”?

The strength of the play is inhow the writing spotlights thosemoments we all know so well andthat sound so absurd when depict-ed one after the other. Being reminded of one’s own failed relationships, watching the play islike watching a good comedian –often funny and, despite being

cringeworthy at times, you want tostay to the finale.

As with the different stages ofdeath, the women finally accepttheir situations and move on withtheir lives, singing such lyrics as“you don’t really love me; you justkeep me hanging on,” there are“too many fish in the sea” and “Iwill survive.”

Bittergirl is actually an autobio-graphical play written by threeToronto actresses who had, indeed,just gotten dumped by a husband,live-in boyfriend and short-termpartner. The positive reaction to theplay led to the 2005 book Bittergirl:

Getting Over Getting Dumped. Af-ter that, the writers added the songs,accompanied by an all-female bandonstage, and the musical was born.

Besides the sharp, insightful writ-ing, these women (and Epstein) canall belt out a tune, making the per-formance a hit from the beginningto the (not so) bitter end.

Bittergirl runs at the Arts ClubGranville Island Stage until July 29.For tickets and more information,visit artsclub.com. �

Baila Lazarus is Vancouver-basedwriter and principal media strate-gist at phase2coaching.com.

This is to advise that the

UNVEILING OFHEADSTONE

in loving memory of

ESTELLECIVKINwill take placeJuly 16, 2017

at 11 a.m.at the

Schara TzedeckCemetery

2345 Marine Dr.New Westminster, B.C.

This is to advise that the

UNVEILING OFHEADSTONE

in loving memory of

GERALDINEBIELY

will take placeJuly 13, 2017

at 11 a.m.at the

Schara TzedeckCemetery2345 Marine Dr.

New Westminster, B.C.

DEATH ANNOUNCEMENTSEDITH RODIN

JUNE 23

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NISSON GOLDMANJUNE 27

HERBERT HYMANNAOMI PULVERS

MAURICE SCHACHTERNORMAN KRAKOWER

JUNE 29

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BITTTERGIRL from page 1

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Katrina Reynolds and Josh Epstein in Bittergirl, at the Arts ClubGranville Island Stage until July 29.

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ERYonatan Avraham, studentambassador of HUstart.