It is difficult to broaden the diversity of the Schara Tzedeck family, but by joining the shul in 2019 we have tried our best.

We fly the flag for the proud, once vibrant (if small) but now sadly almost entirely declined Northern Irish Jewish community. 

Pamela Shapiro was born and bred in Belfast, Northern Ireland and if you listen carefully you can hear the accent. Her parents grew up in Belfast in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s as did Marcus’s father. The introduction of Pamela to Marcus was a “shidduch” by our parents but as we both are stubborn individuals who rather resented being “set up” the initial meeting was disastrous and we never spoke again until we met at a mutual friend’s party in London a couple of years after the initial introduction. 

Our families date back four generations in Northern Ireland, and before that were exclusively Litvaks* from various stetls in northern Lithuania.

2014 we immigrated to Vancouver, now a family of 6 with children Rebecca, Katie, William and Henry. We settled on the North Shore in West Vancouver and joined Congregation Har El, where Henry became Bar Mitzvah in 2016.

In 2019 we decided to join Schara Tzedeck, our initial “settling in” period being rudely interrupted by COVID restrictions.  Keeping one’s distance and being inaudible and unrecognizable behind a mask is hardly conducive to meeting one’s fellow congregants.

Today our nuclear family is scattered with two in Montreal (Katie and Henry), one in Berlin (Rebecca) and one in London, England (William) while we have siblings and living parents in the UK.  Unsurprisingly, we spend some time “on the road” living up to the stereotype of the Wandering Jew.

We marked our first simcha at Schara Tzedeck recently sponsoring a premium scotch on the occasion of the birth our first grandchild in Montreal, Selma Anne Shapiro, born to Katie and her husband, Cameron Shapiro.

Marcus Shapiro and Pamela nee Wainer.

*Like many Litvaks we have strong South African connections but those are beyond the scope of this introduction!