Discovering Doikayt: A New Peretz Initiative for 2025-26

The Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture is proud to present Discovering Doikayt, a new initiative launched with support from a $70,000 grant from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation’s National Anti-Racism Fund.

The initiative will support members of the Peretz community to connect to ancestral roots and identities, critically face the histories of antisemitism, racism, migration, and colonization in Canada, and enhance our collective capacity to engage in inclusive, anti-racist dialogue and meaningful change on the community and policy levels.

The concept of Doikayt (“here-ness”) stems from progressive, Yiddish-speaking movements of the 20th century and emphasizes that struggles for justice, equity, and mutual liberation begin here in the place where we live. Through educational programs, partnerships, and a community-led projects, Discovering Doikayt will offer opportunities to combine deep and meaningful learning about Jewish history in and outside Canada with engagement in real, tangible anti-racism work for social change in the Jewish community.

Progressive, Intersectional Jewish History Education 

 א פאָלקס-זכרון איז די היסטאָריע! אָן היסטאָריע — וי א מענטש אָן א זכרון — קען קיין פאָלק נישט קליגער, נישט בעסער ווערן.

— I. L. Peretz, “Vegn Geshichte" [“On History”] in Di ṿerḳ fun Yitsḥaḳ Leybush Perets vol. 12, p. 35

Icchok Lejb Perec by Władysław Wajntraub (Wikimedia)

As I. L. Peretz wrote in 1890, "A people's memory is history! Without history -- like a person without a memory – a people can become neither wiser nor better.” Jewish history is complex and multifaceted, including great cultural and historical achievements, along with traumatic memory of persecution, discrimination, and violence. Jews share a common history of experiencing these oppressions alongside other migrant groups and Indigenous peoples; our collective liberation lies in the shared recognition of struggle and fight to free ourselves from these systems of oppression.

One of the goals of the initiative is to approach cultural and historical education within the Jewish community through a progressive, intersectional, and trauma-informed lens. In order to do so, Discovering Doikayt aims to facilitate learning in a way that allows members of the community to approach historical memory in a safer and more supportive way, and explore sensitive and even painful issues without further generating suspicion and distrust of others, instead fostering inclusion, solidarity and mutual recognition, and commitment to justice and equity.

Discovering Doikayt will invite participants to elaborate on the ways in which Jewish historical and cultural experience can serve as a bridge for solidarity and justice, and allow for fuller participation of members in the Jewish community in initiatives to combat racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and discrimination, drawing from Jewish values of social justice, openness to the other, mutual liberation, and critical dialogue.

By combining critical and reflective historical research and learning with a commitment to combating racism and hate in current Canadian society, we believe Discovering Doikayt can serve as a model for other communities, Jewish and non-Jewish, to draw on their unique cultural and historical knowledge and experience for the sake of a better, more just, and equitable society.

Introducing the Peretz Centre's Anti-Racism Community Task Force

Discovering Doikayt will include the creation of a new Anti-Racism Community Task Force, which will be assembled in August/September 2025 with five appointed Peretz members. The Task Force will run in parallel with community educational activities and events and devise recommendations for social justice-oriented policy changes at the Peretz Centre and Jewish cultural and educational institutions.

These policy recommendations will be targeted towards enhancing Jewish organizations’ capacity to engage in inclusive and anti-racist dialogue using intersectional and grounded approaches towards anti-racism, justice, and equity.

Omri Haiven, Anti-Racism Community Task Force Project Manager

We are pleased to announce Omri Haiven as the project manager who will facilitate and support the Task Force’s activities. Omri is an active member of the Peretz Centre who shares his expertise in community-building, knowledge mobilization, political advocacy, and research. He has worked and volunteered in a range of initiatives connected to systemic social change, including climate justice, economic justice, racial justice, Indigenous solidarity, food and energy sovereignty, and anti-oppression education.

With an extensive background in both grassroots community organizing and academic/institutional work, Omri is well positioned to aid the taskforce in learning from the Peretz community and identifying opportunities for culture and policy change that will further align Peretz with its founding values, and support the goals of the Discovering Doikayt initiative.

Omri is originally from Nova Scotia but has lived in Vancouver for over 6 years. His other work involves green energy policy, farming, and photovoltaics. Please reach out to him to say hello: ohaiven@peretz-centre.org

The Task Force’s recommendations will be implemented in inclusive, intercultural Jewish education programs for children, young adults, and seniors, as well as community events and celebrations. They will also be shared with the Peretz community and other communities in a final report.

Submit a Nomination

Crucially, the Peretz Centre is one of the only institutional spaces within the Jewish community in Vancouver where constructive, compassionate, and open dialogue around Israel and Palestine, Zionism, and Palestinian Solidarity is not silenced or censored. With our long history of peace activism and respect for the humanity of all peoples, we believe that the Peretz Centre is uniquely situated to undertake and share this work with other Jewish community organizations.

Educational Programs Exploring Landscapes of Jewish Histories

The other major part of this initiative involves two educational seminars, which are each accompanied by a public lecture series as well as open-source digital learning tools, recorded lectures, accessible scholarly texts, oral histories, and more.

Zhargon poster art by Jess Goldman

Zhargon: A Journey through the Histories of Yiddishkayt (starting October 21st, 2025) will explore the histories, languages, and cultures of Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe and the deep, long-lasting connections between Jewish and non-Jewish communities across a vast geography and cultural landscape.

Doikayt: Reckoning with Jewish Histories in Canada is a new seminar (starting January 20th, 2026) that will delve into the intersection of Canadian and Jewish history through thoughtful, critical engagement with the history of colonization in Canada and a focus on how immigrants (Jews and non-Jews) interacted with and were implicated in colonization. This seminar will engage with scholars and researchers dedicated to reconciliation through an intercultural lens, with each session confronting this difficult history and our connections to it.

These educational programs will culminate in a workshop collaboration with the University of British Columbia’s Centre for European Studies (spring 2026).

Meaningful Learning & Change Starts Here with Discovering Doikayt

80th anniversary stamp by Jess Goldman (2025)

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Peretz Centre. Since 1945, Peretz has been a safe haven for a wide range of progressive Jewish people, organizations, and cultural and social allies who struggle to find a home within the confines of mainstream Jewish institutions.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of an exciting period of growth and renewal from the blossoming Yiddish cultural revival movement to the resurgence of progressive politics in the face of fascist violence, crises of loneliness and alienation, and planetary catastrophe.

Discovering Doikayt is the first step in a larger, community-led process, in which community members are involved in the various stages of learning and leadership and invited to actively explore areas of interest and shape their learning experience, alongside developing collaborative, intersectional approaches for working towards peace and justice together.

Through this new initiative, we aim to produce a growing body of historical and cultural knowledge based in community learning, as well as strategies, policies and actions to tackle racism within Jewish educational and cultural institutions in BC and across Canada.

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About the Peretz Centre

The Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture was founded in 1945 to establish and conduct a school that provides students of all ages with a progressive and modern Jewish cultural education.

Located in Vancouver, BC  on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, we hold classes, lectures, exhibitions, concerts, holiday celebrations and similar gatherings in order to teach and advance the cause of progressive and modern Jewish learning, culture, and education and the Yiddish language. Our doors are open to people of diverse cultures, beliefs, genders, and sexual orientation.

We acknowledge the support of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation with funding provided by the Government of Canada.