New Books

Leensok letokh haor hakhi khazak: meevkhar shirim (Fly Off Into the Strongest Light: Selected Poems); translated into Hebrew by Moshe Dor, with an interview afterword by the author.

Seymour Mayne

Keshev Publishing House, 2009, 127 p.

Professor Mayne is the 2009 recipient of the Association's Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award / Prix d'excellence Louis Rosenberg en études canadiennes juives, which was presented to him during the Community Day portion of the Association's 2009 conference in Ottawa.
 

Back to School
Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews
Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor
Wayne State University Press
Published: March 2008
ISBN: 9780814333839

Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey
Gerald Tulchinsky
University of Toronto Press
May 14 2008
ISBN: 9780802093868
 

Jewish Federation

Award Inspires Endowment Fund at JCF

July 2007

In November of 1970, Cyril E. Leonoff was instrumental in founding the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia. Over the first 30 years of its existence, the JHS was housed in the basements of homes, moved to a tiny office in the basement of the Jewish Community Centre and then moved once again to a more spacious office of 380 square feet on the JCC’s 2nd floor.

After 30 years of collecting documents, conducting oral histories, preserving, conserving and publishing the history of the Jewish people of British Columbia, a dedicated Archival office was established and plans for a Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia began to develop. The museum officially opened in March 2007 and currently offers exhibits, education and events relating to local Jewish history and genealogy.

Dr. Randall Schnoor, president ACJS and Cyril Leonoff, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in May 2007

Cyril E. Leonoff, founder of the Jewish Historical Society of B.C. was the recipient of the 2007 Association of Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award for a lifetime of scholarly achievement in the research and writing of the Jewish history of British Columbia and of Jewish farm settlements on the prairies.

In response to Cyril’s contribution to the Jewish community of BC and as a result of receiving the ACJS Distinguished Services Award, the JHS Board of Directors is proud to announce the establishment of the Cyril Leonoff Fund for the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia. Donations to the fund can be made by calling the Jewish Community Foundation  at 604-257-5100.

Source: Jewish Federation — Greater Vancouver
 

Recent News

Entre mémoire et oubli

La transmission du patrimoine littéraire yiddish de Montréal

The workshop entitled « Entre mémoire et oubli. La transmission du patrimoine littéraire yiddish de Montréal » will take place on October 3rd 2008, at the Université de Montréal. This will be the first conference on Montreal Yiddish literature to take place in a francophone context, organized by Chantal Ringuet (University of Ottawa) in collaboration with the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoises (CRILCQ) and the Département d'études anglaises. It will bring together researchers, writers and specialists of the Montreal Jewish Community, who will discuss issues surrounding the transmission of the Yiddish heritage today, from the point of view of their own
experiences and interests.

Presentations will be in French and in English.

**

La journée d'études « Entre mémoire et oubli. La transmission du patrimoine littéraire yiddish de Montréal » aura lieu le 3 octobre 2008 à l'Université de Montréal. S'agissant du premier événement portant sur la littérature yiddish montréalaise qui se déroulera dans un contexte francophone, cette journée organisée par Chantal Ringuet (U. d'Ottawa) en collaboration avec le CRILCQ et le Département d'études anglaises réunira plusieurs chercheurs, écrivains et/ou membres de la communauté juive qui sont invités à discuter des enjeux que pose la transmission du patrimoine yiddish aujourd'hui, à partir de leurs intérêts et de leur expérience.

Les interventions seront en français et en anglais.

Jewish Studies Take Off, North of the Border

Academics Take Notice of a Uniquely Canadian Subject

Forward.com
The Jewish Daily

Beth Schwartzapfel | Fri. Jan 19, 2007
‘Thirty years ago, the Jewish community of Canada was not a subject for winning tenure at a university,” said Ira Robinson, professor of Judaic studies at Montreal’s Concordia University. Now, all over Canada, scholarly journals, academic conferences, university institutes and endowed professorships are cropping up around a subject that might have seemed parochial a generation ago: Canadian Jewish Studies.

The University of Ottawa’s new Vered Program in Jewish Canadian Studies will enroll the first undergraduates in its minor this fall, and its first major publication, the bilingual “Traduire le Montreal Yiddish” (“New Readings in Yiddish Montreal”), will be put out by the university’s press next year. Toronto’s York University has an endowed chair for the study of Canadian Jewry. And the largest program of the lot, Concordia’s Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, has an endowed chair, 10 graduate students and a visiting-scholars program, and has already published four books, including “Canadian Jewish Studies Reader” from 2004 and, most recently, an English translation of the 1948 Yiddish novel “The Rich Man,” by Montreal writer Henry Kreisel.

Scholars across North America have taken note. Editors of the English-language international journal Jewish History recently entered into an agreement with Concordia’s Robinson and Richard Menkis of the University of British Columbia to edit a special issue on Canada, Robinson told the Forward. This publication comes in addition to the journal Canadian Jewish Studies, which has a circulation of some 200 academics and is published annually by the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies.

“There is increasing interest from Canadian Jews, who have finally attained the realization that we are interesting,” said Steven Lapidus, a graduate student at Concordia who is studying the development of the Orthodox rabbinate in Montreal. “We have long underplayed our appeal.”

Canadian Jewish Studies is a wide-ranging field. Typically, programs are interdisciplinary — built of shared appointments with professors in subjects such as history, religion, Canadian studies, literature and languages — and undergraduate courses are cross-listed. Professor Norman Ravvin, for instance, Concordia’s chair of Canadian Jewish studies, will teach a religious-studies class this spring titled “The Canadian Jewish Experience: Jewish Identity and Religious Life in Canada,” while University of Ottawa professor Seymour Mayne will teach a course in the Canadian Studies department called “Jewish Canadian Writers: The Making of a Tradition.”

The unique experience of Canadian Jews is rooted in the unique history of the country itself. Where America imagines itself as a melting pot, Canada’s immigrant mythology is that of a mosaic. “There’s no uniformity, no single approach to Canada,” University of Ottawa professor of history Pierre Anctil told the Forward; compared to the United States, “it’s a much more decentralized and multiple country.” Therefore, when Jews first started to immigrate to Canada in large numbers at the start of the 20th century, there was not as much of an emphasis on assimilation as there was in the United States.

Because Canada was a British colony, “Canadian Jews adopted, at the beginning of their history, a British vision of Judaism — which meant Orthodox,” Anctil told the Forward. In concert with the “mosaic” approach to difference, these Orthodox roots have caused Canada’s Jews to “remain more Jewish, more attracted to their own tradition,” said Anctil. “There is less intermarriage, more attachment to the community and to a Jewish education for the children.” Indeed, more than one-third of Jewish school-age children in Montreal attend Jewish day schools, compared to 12% in the United States.

If newly arrived Canadians’ vision of Judaism was British, their surroundings were often French; Jewish history in Canada straddles the country’s most distinctive cultural and linguistic divide. For most of the community’s history, Montreal was the capital of Canadian Jewish life. But the passage in 1980 of the “language laws” — which established French as the sole official language of Quebec, and coincided with the rise of the nationalist secession movement — caused many Jews to feel unwelcome and prompted a mass migration westward, to Toronto. The Jewish population of Montreal fell by almost 20%. Today, some 200,000 of Canada’s 350,000 Jews live in Toronto; 100,000 remain in Montreal, and 50,000 live elsewhere.

Canada has the sixth-largest population of Jews in the world, according to the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Still, the absolute number of Canadian Jews is relatively small, which means that many students of Canadian Jewish Studies are not Jewish themselves. Anctil — who is not Jewish — says that this should not be surprising. Because Jewish immigrants were the first non-Christians to immigrate to Canada in large numbers, “to study Jews is to study the level of tolerance that Canadian society had toward people of different origins,” he said. “We cannot do a sound and valid history of Canada without doing the Jewish component.”

Furthermore, said Anctil, Jews have had much in common with French Canadians, particularly since Jewish life was centered in Quebec for so long. “One minority meets another minority, and there’s quite a lot to be learned,” he said. “The way that Jews have preserved their heritage is of interest to Francophones as well.”

Canadian Jewish history may date from more than a century ago, but the evolution of an academic field related to it is a more recent development. According to Concordia’s Robinson, “through the 1960s, the Canadian Jewish community was largely a community of immigrants or immigrants’ children.” It’s only recently, he said, that “it’s developed a much stronger sense of itself as its own community, and has a bit more of the perspective that allows it to examine itself.”

Many historians point to the 1983 book “None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948,” by historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper, as the first example of a truly singular Jewish Canadian scholarship. “It created a real splash within the Canadian academic community,” said Robinson. “This is one of the major signposts in this process.”

Shortly thereafter, with the passage of two Multiculturalism Acts, in 1988 and 1991, the Government of Canada made multiculturalism official policy. This moment, says Concordia’s Ravvin, marked “a shift in interest and willingness of universities, and also donors, that comes from the sense of Canada as a multiethnic place.” Some of the initiatives that followed, such as federal support for “ethnic university chairs,” provided funds for programs such as Concordia’s and York’s; both were established in 1997. Ottawa’s Anctil also points to the fact that “many of the Jewish communities have a strong ability to preserve and organize themselves. That’s a strong reason why we have these programs now, because they’re being supported by Jews — financially, and also in terms of [recognizing their] importance.”

Source: Forward.com

Kulanu founder receives award for Jewish leadership

By FRANCES KRAFT
Staff Reporter
Canadian Jewish News - Internet Edition
July 6, 2006

TORONTO - Of all the awards and the recognition Dan Heller has received as a student, nothing compares to the sense of accomplishment he feels being this year’s recipient of the Beth Tzedec Stephen Cooper Award.

The award, which is given through the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto – the school from which Heller graduated four years ago – recognizes excellence in leadership and commitment to the Jewish community.

With a degree in history and Jewish studies from the University of Toronto, an acceptance to Stanford University’s eastern European Jewish history doctoral program (he hopes to become a professor) and his involvement with the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies (ACJS), Heller, 22, was more than qualified to receive the $700 award last month.

But one aspect of his Jewish involvement made him think twice about applying for it.

Heller is the founder and outgoing director of Kulanu, “Toronto’s queer Jewish social group.”

“I was really ambivalent about putting in an application because of the ambivalent relationship CHAT has with the issue of GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered] students.”

Heller said he recalled one of his teachers equating homosexuality to bestiality.

“I remember that being a hurtful experience, however, the students called … the teacher [on her comment], and I think that continues to be one of CHAT’s greatest strengths. It really is a place that fosters dialogue and Jewish pluralism,” he said.

He said that despite the skepticism he felt about his ability to win the award, he applied for it nonetheless.

“I really didn’t expect that I would receive the award, especially because of what Kulanu is. I think that receiving the award, it almost signalled the recognition that yes, Jewish gay students do exist in the community,” he said.

“It was a hallmark of my four years at university because for the first time, I felt like I could go back to CHAT.”

He said that when he graduated, he felt like he needed to take a break from all things Jewish. A year later, he came out of the closet.

“I think immediately after I came out I decided that I didn’t want to give up my commitment to Judaism and Jewish life. The first thing I did in university that was heavily involving Jewish life was the founding of Kulanu. The purpose of the group was to foster a positive Jewish environment for these people who felt estranged from Jewish life,” Heller said, adding that Kulanu helps to bring people back to the religion.

Heller added that his proudest moment came when a mother of a CHAT graduate and a Kulanu member told him how important Kulanu was to the both of them.

“She was just so thrilled that there was a place where he could continue to be excited about and express his Jewish identity.”

Heller’s involvement with Jewish campus life didn’t end with Kulanu.

He became the assistant program chair of the ACJS, which organizes annual conferences on Canadian Jewish history and culture, after he presented his research paper about Toronto Zionist summer camps from the 1930s to ’50s to the 2004 conference.

His research about the relationship between Canadian Diaspora Jews and the State of Israel and Zionism led him to become more interested in Canadian Jewish history and he continued his involvement with the ACJS the following year.

As the 2005-06 program chair, Heller organized a three-day conference that brought scholars from all over the world to discuss issues relevant to Canadian Jews, organized a klezmer concert, a dinner and a community panel called “The Futures of Yiddish Culture and Education in Canada.”

Although Heller said he is unsure about how Jewishly involved he will be as a Stanford student, he said he is pleased with all that he has accomplished in his 22 years, and has plans for the future.

“It’s great to be at a stage in your life when you continue to surprise yourself with the decisions you make. I’ve been very grateful to have supportive parents and a community that has been open to let me pursue all these different avenues.”

One avenue that Heller is eager to pursue is to become a father one day and raise a Jewish family.

“My number 1 goal in life today is to become a father. I really struggled with that. Even at a young age, at 13, that was the kicker. I thought it would have to be either/or.

“I feel blessed to be living in an era where doors are opening up, but there are still tremendous obstacles,” he said about becoming a Jewish, gay father.

Regardless of the obstacles, Heller and other Jewish gay people are sure to face, he is encouraged by the fact that he was recognized by CHAT as a contributor to the Jewish community.

“I’m deeply surprised and deeply grateful. I hope it is a signal that there is a place at CHAT to begin in a very serious fashion, in an open fashion, acknowledging that there were GLBT students and continue to be GLBT students, and to address the place that these students have in the Jewish community,” he said.

“It is really my hope that someone gay at CHAT, someone [at another] high school, will read the article and see someone they can relate to.”

For more information about Kulanu.

Source: Canadian Jewish News

Jewish studies association holds conference

By FRANCES KRAFT
Staff Reporter
Canadian Jewish News - Internet Edition
May 11, 2006

“I think it’s a tremendous achievement that we have over 30 scholarly papers,” said AJCS president Randal Schnoor, a York University sociologist. Canadian Jewish studies is a small but growing field, he noted.

“I’m very excited about the conference because it’s our 30th anniversary and it’s one of our largest conferences,” he said.

The event will kick off Sunday, May 28, at Beth Sholom Synagogue with a day-long “Festival of Canadian Jewish Life and Culture” that is open to the public.

Keynote speaker Morton Weinfeld, a McGill University sociologist and author of Like Everyone Else, but Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews, will discuss “The shift from Canadian anti-Semitism to anti-Semitism in Canada,” at an evening session.

Daytime sessions will include “Portraits of Jewish Scholars and Rabbis in Montreal”; “Israel and the Mediation of Diaspora Identity,” which will feature a speaker on “Campus Zionism and the Embattled Jew”; “Sephardic Canadian Jewry”; and “The Commemoration of Canadian Jewish War Veterans.”

The evening will include a dessert reception in honour of the organization’s 30th anniversary, and presentation of a distinguished service award to historian Gerald Tulchinsky of Queen’s University. York University history professor Irving Abella will receive the same award two nights later.

The other two days of the conference are part of a larger meeting called the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, held every year at a different university, said Schnoor.

The AJCS conference will include a joint session with the Society for Italian Studies and the Association for Canadian Hispanists that will examine identities among the Italian, Spanish and Jewish communities in Canada.

“I think it will be a very dynamic session,” said Schnoor, who is also a presenter (along with Dan Mendelssohn Aviv of Bialik Hebrew Day School and Jack Lipinsky of United Synagogue Day School and the University of Toronto), at a session on “The Jewish Day School in Canada.”

The conference will wind up with a dinner, a klezmer concert and a panel on “The Futures of Yiddish Education and Culture in Canada.” The event is open to the public for a cost of $10.

For further information about the conference, e-mail program chair Dan Heller.

Source: Canadian Jewish News

News

Herzl Health Clinics

Herzl dispensary, Montreal.

Community and Family Medicine in the Montreal Jewish Community in the 20th Century.

A presentation by author Michael Regenstreif.
Monday, March 27th, 11:30 a.m at Vanier College, 821 Ste. Croix Avenue, room A569.

Sponsored by the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Vanier College Jewish Studies.

Canadian Jewish News

November 3, 2005

Web-based journal reaches out to Jewish students

By SHERI SHEFA
Staff Reporter

A new web-based journal that aims to reach Jewish students and get them involved in the community is accepting submissions for its first issue.

Hyla Korn, 23, a graduate student studying religion at the University of Toronto, and Joe Heller, an undergraduate student at the University of Western Ontario majoring in English, are the co- editors of the Student Journal of Canadian Jewish Studies, which is being sponsored by the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies (ICJS) at Montreal's Concordia University.

"The purpose of the journal is to foster and familiarize young Jews with the field of Canadian Jewish studies. It is a journal meant to illustrate the Jewish experience in Canada," Korn said.

The first edition is expected to appear in March.

Korn said she and Heller realized that an effort needed to be made to engage young Jews in the community when they noticed they were the only two young people speaking at the ICJS conference at Western earlier this year.

They pitched the idea for a student journal, and the institute agreed to sponsor and fund the initiative as long as Korn and Heller agreed to edit it.

Deciding that this would be a great forum for students to explore and learn about their Jewish heritage and culture, they jumped at the opportunity.

"A journal of this kind has yet to be explored. There is nothing about the Canadian Jewish experience," Korn said. "In that sense, the question is why there is so much documentation of the American experience and not the Canadian experience.

"We felt this was a neglected area of study, and there is a need for it."

In an effort to correct this imbalance, the journal hopes to provide a forum for graduate and undergraduate papers, as well as articles and book reviews, from any discipline relating to the Jewish experience in Canada.

Topics will range from Holocaust education to topics of Jewish identity, Korn said.

She added that while the hope is for academic papers and articles, it's unlikely she and Heller will reject any submissions as long as they relate in some way to the Jewish experience in Canada.

The idea is that the more student submissions they receive, the more successful the project will be, she said.

The editors will accept submissions from students in undergraduate or graduate programs, and while they don't have to be attending a Canadian university or college, papers must be about a Canadian subject.

In addition to contributing to the promotion of Jewish life in Canada, each writer will receive a stipend, but Korn said it's too early to say how much it will be.

In the journal's first year, it will only be published online. In the future, depending on the success of the project, Korn hopes they will be able to turn it into a hard copy journal.

Submissions for the first edition can be e-mailed to the Student Journal of Canadian Jewish Studies until Dec. 15.