The Jewish Awakening of Vancouver Island: Rabbi Meir and Chani Kaplan

00:00 Speaker 1 Rabbi Meir Kaplan and his wife Chanie arrived on Vancouver Island over 20 years ago.

00:06 Speaker 2 If you're asking if when we came here people were waiting for us with flowers and balloons at the airport, the answer is no.

00:13 Speaker 3 I mean, nobody was there greeting us.

00:15 Speaker 2 I don't remember someone who said, "Oh, finally Chabad is here."

00:19 Speaker 3 People didn't really understand why we were there.

00:21 Speaker 1 But 23 years later, nearly 300 people gathered as the Kaplans and their community broke ground for their most ambitious project among the many they've undertaken.

00:33 Speaker 2 There we go. Mazel tov.

00:37 Speaker 1 It will include more classrooms for their ever-expanding schools, a kosher restaurant, athletic facilities, and a senior residence and campus designed to bring the generations together. So how did the Jewish people of Vancouver Island, who weren't asking for Chabad, rapidly coalesce into a strong Jewish community that demands more and more of it? I'm Gary Wollek, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch. Rabbi Meir Kaplan grew up in Tzfat, Israel, where his father, Rabbi Arye Leib Kaplan, had been sent by the Rebbe to rebuild Jewish life.

02:45 Speaker 2 And he was able to build so many institutions for the community, also to bring so many people into the fold.

02:55 Speaker 1 But when Meir was just 19, his father died in a car accident while traveling to Minsk to support the shliach there. One of the last things Meir remembers his father telling him was why he had made that trip.

03:09 Speaker 2 Because he appreciated the work that a shliach does in remote places.

03:15 Speaker 1 Kaplan says he still draws inspiration from that message and from the work his mother, Sara Kaplan, is still doing in Tzfat.

03:23 Speaker 2 It was clear to me that I wanted to go to a remote community, a place that has little available Jewishly, and to be able to enrich Jewish life.

03:34 Speaker 1 Meir Kaplan received semikhah in New York in 2002. Chanie Kaplan was born in Montreal to Rabbi Yossi and Freida Kesselman, who moved on shlichus to Oak Park, Michigan, shortly after Chanie's birth. She grew up in a genuine shlichus environment in a suburb of Detroit, but-

03:55 Speaker 3 Living in a Jewish community where we had cheder, and we had kosher food, and we had everything that we needed, I kind of felt like we're not real shluchim over here. In my head, I always felt like that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to some faraway, remote place.

04:10 Speaker 1 After seminary in Tzfat, Chanie accepted a job to teach in Anchorage, where she experienced many of Alaska's peculiar joys.

04:19 Speaker 3 The long days and bumping into moose on the way to shul and the way back from shul was definitely part of our experience, yes.

04:26 Speaker 1 It was remote work for sure, but like her future husband, Chanie dreamed of strengthening Jewish life in a new frontier. The Kaplans almost crossed paths before they actually met. Meir had worked in Oak Park while he was in yeshiva, and Chanie was studying in Tzfat. He traveled back to Michigan to meet Chanie in 2002, and they were married after just two dates. The young couple worked for a year in New York area schools, but from day one, they looked for remote shlichus opportunities.

05:01 Speaker 3 Having our place where we're just completely devoted to inspiring other Yidden, bringing them closer to Yiddishkeit, and making a space for them to be able to be connected.

05:16 Speaker 1 About eight months after they were married, the Kaplans heard that Rabbi Yitzchak Weinberg, the head shliach of British Columbia, had arrived in Crown Heights. So did a powerful winter storm on the day they were to talk with him about opportunities in the province.

05:33 Speaker 3 And the snow was very high, like up to the knees. I was eight months pregnant, and we looked outside and said, "I don't know if this interview is on." We tried to get in touch with Rabbi Weinberg and were not able to, and decided we're gonna go.

05:48 Speaker 1 The Kaplans trudged many blocks through knee-deep snow. They saw just one set of footprints leading to the office door, but who did they belong to? They went inside and were overjoyed that it was Rabbi Weinberg. In the spring of 2003, the Kaplans were offered a position on Vancouver Island, and they accepted sight unseen. They visited Vancouver Island that summer for the very first time.

06:18 Speaker 2 So we knew very little about the place before we came here. I thought Canada is basically a big pile of ice. And we came here, we were blown away by the beauty of the place, by the climate and the nature. And then we came here on the island, we realized what it means living on an island, and how important it is to bring more Yiddishkeit because otherwise it's just not accessible. I just knew there's Jews, and there's an opportunity to do the Rebbe's work.

06:51 Speaker 1 Vancouver Island had once supported a small Jewish community, but by 2003 there were perhaps 2,000 Jews scattered among Vancouver Island's 12,000 square miles, and very little Jewish infrastructure.

07:06 Speaker 2 Most of them came here for quality of life. But none of them came here because they were seeking Jewish life.

07:15 Speaker 1 This was exactly the opportunity the Kaplans had looked for. The Kaplans bought a house in Victoria, British Columbia's capital, and began their work.

07:27 Speaker 2 Our focus initially was to reach out to those Jews that didn't really have, had a connection at all. To go to these Jews that no one else thinks about.

07:38 Speaker 1 Rabbi Kaplan says their first big initiative was to build a sukkah mobile and drive it up island. In Nanaimo, a small city about 70 miles north of Victoria, they met a mother with three daughters. When they pulled into her driveway-

07:53 Speaker 2 She took them out, and she immediately started to cry when she saw the sukkah. It's almost like we came from a different planet when we landed on their house. And it felt like we really were able to ignite a neshamah.

08:09 Speaker 1 Back in Victoria, the Kaplans opened their living room and offered classes, holiday programs, and prayer services. They started a preschool and a Hebrew school.

08:20 Speaker 2 And Baruch Hashem, Jews who were unaffiliated or Jews who were affiliated were happy to find an opportunity to go in the Yiddishkeit and have a more authentic version of Yiddishkeit.

08:32 Speaker 1 They started with six students. But in just three years, the community had grown so rapidly that they had to rent a 2,000 square foot space for all their activities.

08:43 Speaker 3 It was great. We had like a little annex building. One room was the shul, one room was the preschool.

08:48 Speaker 1 Chabad of Vancouver Island used that space for about eight years, and then they outgrew that. So the Kaplans began a fundraising campaign. In a very short time, they had collected nearly four million Canadian dollars, almost all of it from the local community.

09:09 Speaker 2 When we started the building campaign, we had already a core people who were really dedicated to make sure that Chabad presence will continue and grow.

09:21 Speaker 1 In less than two years, the Chabad Centre for Jewish Life and Learning became a reality. In 2016, the Kaplans opened their new modern 6,000 square foot facility, featuring a mikvah, social hall, daycare center, office space, expanded classrooms, and a commercial kosher kitchen, and a kosher store.

09:44 Speaker 3 We had to add as well an infant-toddler program, which we were only able to add as soon as we opened up our own center, and that's really when things took off a lot more. Because as soon as they came in, that's where they started, and that's where they continued, and that's where they finished.

09:57 Speaker 1 That led to their Kinneret Tamim Academy Elementary School, which the Kaplans opened in 2023. How was this accomplished so quickly? The Kaplans say their approach was a simple one.

10:10 Speaker 3 We just came to the community, and we listened, and whatever was needed is what we put our energy into, and you go step by step.

10:19 Speaker 2 If you'd asked me 10 years, probably even five years ago, if there would ever be a Jewish day school in Victoria, I would be very, very doubtful. The parents that send their children to our childcare are not, most of them, they were not planning on sending their children to a Jewish preschool. And to hear from these parents that they would entertain the idea of a Jewish day school was shocking to us. But we couldn't avoid it anymore, because if they are the one asking for it, we must respond. We built a, a center that we thought had everything we needed. So I thought my job now for the rest of my life and till Mashiach comes, is to fill this place with Yidden, with Yiddishkeit, and that's it. I don't have to build anymore.

11:05 Speaker 1 This is a good place for the story to end, right? Everybody's happy, and the Kaplans had fulfilled their mission. But no. In just 10 short years, the community had completely outgrown its deluxe facility. Many students had to be housed in temporary modular classrooms situated on adjacent lots. Chabad of Vancouver Island needed to expand again in a big way. So it was back to the drawing board.

11:34 Speaker 2 And then we realized that we may have an opportunity to do something greater here. I used to bring my daughter to visit seniors in the local homes, and we saw how the environment was transformed when the young children came in, and how the interaction between young children and seniors can bring such a tremendous benefit. And this is when this vision started coming together, that we're gonna build a school in a senior residence, and most importantly have this link between the generations.

12:08 Speaker 1 For 20 years, the Kaplans and their 13 children had befriended senior citizens who needed Jewish connection, but many needed more than that.

12:20 Speaker 2 Jewish seniors who want to age here, they cannot do it in Jewish environment. It feels for a Jew like they are in exile. They, they really don't feel belong.

12:30 Speaker 1 Rabbi Kaplan drew inspiration for this from a talk the Lubavitcher Rebbe gave in 1986 when the Rebbe addressed a combined Hanukkah rally for seniors and children.

12:42 Speaker 2 And it was just unbelievable, and I felt this was definitely an encouragement for this idea.

12:48 Speaker 1 The Kaplans began to brainstorm Dorot Village. Dorot means generations in Hebrew. The Kaplans introduced the idea to the community, and again, the response was swift, not just through donations. Community members whose special skills and expertise had helped create the Jewish Center for Life and Learning in 2016 stepped up again.

13:14 Speaker 4 My name is Lindy Short.

13:15 Speaker 1 Lindy is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She was born in Johannesburg and raised in a traditional Jewish family. In 1975, she moved to Calgary to find work as a nurse. She met her husband there. They had two boys and moved to Victoria in 1983.

13:33 Speaker 4 And not because we were really exploring Jewish communities at that stage.

13:39 Speaker 1 Lindy and her husband did attend a synagogue in Victoria. They kept Shabbos and kashrus. Their three children became Binot Mitzvah there. But they still felt there should be more to their Jewish experience. Then, in 2004, they hosted a bris at their home. It was then that they first met the Kaplans.

14:00 Speaker 4 Well, they certainly made an impression on us. They were very young at that time, like very young, in their early 20s, and, uh, we were already in our 40s. And they were just respectful and kind.

14:13 Speaker 1 By this time, Lindy had left nursing for interior design. Somehow, the Kaplans knew that.

14:19 Speaker 4 And it was a few months later that Rabbi asked to meet me. They were thinking of starting the preschool outside of their home, and they wanted me to do the interior for them. So of course I said yes.

14:35 Speaker 1 But what started as a working relationship with the Kaplans grew into something deeper.

14:40 Speaker 4 Now, my husband had started learning with Rabbi Kaplan. He started going to shul at Chabad. One day, he came home, and these were his words. He said, "I have found my rabbi." That was it. We just dove in. You know, I started covering my hair. My husband grew a beard. He started putting on tefillin every day. We felt that they were going to grow us in a way that we couldn't have imagined before.

15:06 Speaker 1 Lindy had worked with architects on the interior design for the Jewish Center for Life and Learning, and her husband had been on the planning committee, so naturally, the Kaplans reached out to them again for help with Dorot Village.

15:19 Speaker 4 Which is going to be absolutely magnificent.

15:23 Speaker 2 Exactly 10 years ago, we stood exactly 50 meters from here, and we opened the door to Chabad Center, the first synagogue which has been built in Vancouver Island for over 150 years.

15:36 Speaker 1 The community came together for a groundbreaking ceremony on August 3rd, 2026, Hebrew date 20th of Av, 10 years to the day that the Kaplans opened the current center.

15:48 Speaker 2 It's happening. This is the shovel in the ground. Two, one. There we go. Mazel tov. When we all put the soil in the ground, I felt, "Wow, this is happening." And I saw the excitement and how emotional everyone was. And I realized that we are going on a journey that's not only going to transform what it means to be Jewish in Victoria, but I think that bezrat Hashem, if we'll be successful, could be a role model maybe for other Chabad centers and maybe for Jewish communities around the world.

16:28 Speaker 5 There was a ton of excitement because it's going to be such a beautiful place.

16:32 Speaker 1 That's Sarah May Ives. She owns a successful digital marketing and training company, and the Kaplans saw that her business acumen would be an asset to Dorot Village's steering committee. Sarah was born in Ottawa and raised in a non-observant family.

16:49 Speaker 5 My father was not Jewish, and he would always try to tell me things like, "It's just a religion." And my mom always said, "That's not true, Sarah. You're Jewish, and you're always gonna be Jewish no matter what, even if you don't practice." So there was this weird back and forth.

17:03 Speaker 1 That discouraged Sarah, who would later turn to self-help philosophies in her search for meaning, which she found empty. But she always felt a strong sense of Jewish identity, and then inspiration came in a most unusual way.

17:19 Speaker 5 It was the funniest thing in the world. When my son was four years old, he asked me, "Mom, do you think there's such thing as God?" And I said, "Well, I'm not, I'm not sure." And then he started crying, and he said, "No, I know there is. I know there is."

17:31 Speaker 1 Sarah attended shuls in Ottawa for more than 10 years, but she didn't find what she was looking for. Then, in 2023, she moved to Vancouver Island. She met the Kaplans a year later when she and her mother and young daughter attended a Friday night service. It was her first time in an Orthodox shul, but they kept coming back, this time with her son Blue, by then 14 years old.

17:56 Speaker 5 Rabbi Kaplan wanted to talk to us, and he said, "Did Blue have a bar mitzvah?" And he hadn't. I felt really sad for Blue because I had hoped that we would be able to have a bar mitzvah, and I said, "I, you know, I think it's a bit too late." And so Rabbi Kaplan said, "Actually, that's not true."

18:14 Speaker 1 So Blue studied with Rabbi Kaplan for about four months, and they celebrated his bar mitzvah in January 2024, and the whole family was embracing Yiddishkeit.

18:25 Speaker 5 I used to want to practice Shabbat, but I didn't even know how. But now I feel like I also know how to do things much better. Every Shabbat, we light candles, we have a Shabbat dinner, and we go to shul every Saturday.

18:39 Speaker 1 Sarah and family went on a trip to Israel last year, and they've been to the Rebbe's Ohel. Blue is studying Talmud, and Sarah's nine-year-old daughter, Abigail, is enrolled in Kinneret Tamim Academy.

18:52 Speaker 5 And then she and my son will now fight over, "No, we're supposed to do it this way." "No, uh, Rivky told me we do it this way."

18:58 Speaker 1 That's the way you know you have a Jewish home.

19:00 Speaker 5 Right? Yes. It's beautiful. I couldn't have imagined that I would be here right now.

19:09 Speaker 6 To be perfectly candid, Gary, I'm perhaps more surprised than anyone that this is the path that I am now on.

19:15 Speaker 1 That's Shelia Berlin, who grew up in a non-observant Montreal home. Her journey to Yiddishkeit was a long and complicated one. Law school in Israel, a degree in Middle Eastern studies at McGill University in Montreal, studies in Cairo, two law degrees at McGill, a decade and a half studying Hinduism in the Himalayas, life in a Buddhist monastery.

19:39 Speaker 6 Connected to the things that I was choosing to connect to, rather than my heritage.

19:47 Speaker 1 But Shelia returned to Canada in 1999 to practice law. She settled in Victoria in 2011, and got married for the first time. A return to Judaism was not high on her list, until the events of October 7th.

20:03 Speaker 6 I had nowhere to put it. I, I just had... I, I'll cry. I had absolutely nowhere to put it.

20:10 Speaker 1 For the following two years, Shelia struggled to process what had happened. But then, in October 2025, Shelia and her husband heard that Chabad of Vancouver Island was holding a celebration of the release of the remaining hostages.

20:26 Speaker 6 And I just felt I, I just had to be there. So when we went to the center, Rabbi Kaplan opened the door, and he said, "Oh, it's open. Welcome." And then he wanted to know who we were, because he'd never seen us before.

20:42 Speaker 1 Shelia and her husband accepted an invitation for Shabbos dinner, and then Torah classes, and then holiday celebrations. As Shelia integrated into the community, she realized that she was reconnecting with an essential part of herself.

20:57 Speaker 6 When I lived in India, so I learned Hindi, and we sang songs in Hindi and whatnot. When I lived in Thailand, I did prayers in Thai. They were out there. Hebrew is in here. I can't explain that.

21:14 Speaker 1 Shelia also hadn't expected Rabbi Kaplan to ask her to serve on the Dorot Village advisory board, because she's only been involved at Chabad of Vancouver Island for less than a year.

21:25 Speaker 6 I'm still learning people's names.

21:27 Speaker 1 And yet she knows why this new project is so important, and what it means to have the Kaplans on the island.

21:34 Speaker 6 I would never have said this prior to last year. I think it's really important to have Chabad in the community. I think that what they bring to a community is invaluable.

21:48 Speaker 1 Shelia, Sarah, and Lindy were at the groundbreaking on August 3rd, along with about 300 others, including Victoria's mayor and other dignitaries. The Kaplans spoke about plans to open a kosher restaurant, expand the kosher store, build a new community pool, gym, and more permanent classroom space for students of all ages. The new seniors' residence will be adjacent to where the kids will study, connected by a beautiful open space. I asked Lindy Short about the target date for the completion of Dorot Village.

22:24 Speaker 4 One year.

22:25 Speaker 1 Wait, what?

22:28 Speaker 4 I know. We have a very ambitious, a very, very ambitious rabbi. He's never let us down. He pushes in the best possible way. He pushes people to do their best with their best.

22:42 Speaker 3 Things happen quickly here. The blessings come flying.

22:45 Speaker 2 The, the greatest chizzus is that we play a role in this.

22:49 Speaker 1 Notice that Rabbi Meir Kaplan says that he and Chanie merely play a role. That's because their inclination is to credit other Vancouver Islanders who want to take part in this rapid expansion of Jewish life every bit as much as the Kaplans do. It just so happens that their community members are just as quick to credit the Kaplans.

23:11 Speaker 5 I don't know how they do it. I don't even know if they ever sleep, but they're just so dedicated. They really are a perfect illustration of the Rebbe's vision.

23:21 Speaker 1 Lindy Short agrees.

23:23 Speaker 4 I think that the Rebbe's vision for sure will be... Well, it's here. We're already living the vision, there's no question, but we'll be living it even more fully, and it's beautiful.

23:35 Speaker 1 I asked the Kaplans how they've managed to so effectively marshal the energies of so many, and to transform Vancouver Island into a stronghold of Yiddishkeit.

23:45 Speaker 2 We learn in, in Hasidism, especially in the Rebbe's teaching, that, "Ani yeshen ov libi eer," I am asleep, but my soul is awakened. Seems on the outside as if the Jewish people, they are asleep, but really the soul is awake. So sometime you not realizing what kind of alive soul is beneath what seem to be a person who is Jewishly sleeping.

24:11 Speaker 3 I think the Rebbe's vision was about every single person lighting up their space, and if every single person does their job in lighting up their little space, then we'll have a very bright world.

24:25 Speaker 6 Well, I think it shows that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was onto something.

24:33 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com, and if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.