Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes

Helfer, Sharon Gubbay

 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   281 
In keeping with the Jewish National Fund’s philosophy 
that there should be Jewish laborers, Motl, now called Mordechai, 
worked in construction, though he had no formal construction 
experience. Of course, both Mordechai and Chienke were also 
involved in defense and guard duty. 
Unhappiness with rival factions in the kibbutz added 
to the hardships and led them to try private life in Haifa. They 
rented a room with a tiny kitchenette where they shared a shower 
and a toilet with four families. It was difficult to maintain a job 
outside of the kibbutzim and there was not enough food to eat. 
Hence, when parents sent tickets, they returned to Montreal for 
a visit; but the year was 1939 and with the advent of World War 
II, they could not return to Palestine. 
In Montreal difficult times continued; they lost a one-
month-old baby boy and Motl could not get permanent work 
until he got a job as superintendent at Adath Israel Congregation. 
He remained at the synagogue for thirteen years where he had a 
good relationship with the clergy and congregation, but eventu-
ally left his position and synagogue apartment to go out on his 
own in the installment merchant business, known as custom 
peddling. Custom peddlers represent an aspect of Jewish history 
in Montreal, a niche of business no longer in existence. 
They did return to visit Israel in their older years. 
Chienke died in Montreal and Motl, at eighty-nine, moved to 
Toronto to be with his children. It is a story of idealism meet-
ing reality, of having a dream, but being unable to live it. The 
main point of the memoirs, according to their son, is that they 
remained chalutzim in all phases of their life.
Maxine Jacobson
Troper, Harold. The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the 
Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s. Toronto: University 
of Toronto Press, 2010. xi + 356 pp.
Harold Troper’s latest book, The Defining Decade: Identity, 
Politics and the Canadian Jewish community in the 1960s, 
282    CJS/ÉJC
begins on the threshold of the sixties, in 1959. In this year, the 
Canadian Jewish Congress marked the bicentenary of Jews in 
Canada with a series of exhibitions and activities across the 
country. These events illustrated the many contributions made 
by Jews to this country, starting well before Confederation. 
The bicentenary was thus designed to rebrand Canada’s Jews 
as “historical partners” rather than “alien interlopers” in the 
process of nation-building. The year 1959 was chosen based 
on the year in which Aaron Hart, Québec’s first official Jewish 
settler, arrived in Trois Rivières and became active, among 
other things, in trading in furs. This choice of year avoided 
publicly associating the arrival of Canada’s Jews with the 
arrival of the British army and the defeat of the French regime, 
which had prohibited Jews and other non-Catholics from 
settling. Although it was the new policies that came in the wake 
of the British victory that opened the doors to Jews in Canada, it 
would have been politically undesirable to associate Jews with 
“la Conquête”. 
Troper makes the point that the Bicentenary was aimed 
politically outwards, towards Canada’s non-Jews. In the direct, 
lively style he adopts throughout this book, he explains that 
the Yiddish-speaking European immigrant Jews and their chil-
dren didn’t care about the Bicentenary: “Hart, schmart. What 
did most Jews know or care about Hart, Trois-Rivières, or the 
beaver trade? Did it help the mortgage? Did it help get a son 
into McGill or a daughter into the University of Toronto?” 
(11) Troper’s telling of the story of the Bicentenary in the intro-
ductory chapter incorporates the perspectives of the Canadian 
Jewish leadership and the “Jewish street” as well as those of 
English Canada and of Québec. Through the six additional 
thematically organized chapters and Conclusion of The Defining 
Decade, Troper continues to chronicle the identities in play, the 
political stakes, and the issues that challenged Canada’s Jews 
through the sixties. He demonstrates how, in rising to these 
challenges, the community reshaped its power structures, and 
how its identities, personal and collective, were molded. 
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   283 
Troper’s second and third chapters tell a “tale of two 
cities”, Montreal and Toronto. The context in terms of politics 
and identities in the 1960s is quite different in each. Troper 
demonstrates this by highlighting the issues that preoccupied 
each city’s Jews. In the Montreal of the 1960s, a city that 
“pulsed with a vibrant cultural and intellectual life of its own,” 
(41) Troper focuses mainly on two issues. First, he provides a 
succinct account of the complicated question of schooling for 
Montreal’s Jewish children. Second, he traces the delibera-
tions of the Canadian Jewish Congress on the issue of whether 
to participate in Canada’s Bilingualism and Biculturalism 
Commission. In addition to a clear, uncluttered presentation of 
this complex of inter-related issues, Troper’s Montreal chapter 
offers a brief but nuanced overview of the arrival and integration 
of thousands of French-speaking Sephardim. In Toronto, where 
at the end of the 1950s “even the Jews were Presbyterian”, the 
context was different. The central story in this chapter revolves 
around the emergence of the Holocaust survivor community as 
a voice in organized Jewish life. This is the context in which 
the movers and shakers, the “machers” of the organized Jewish 
community are forced to reconsider their policy of quiet diplo-
macy with respect to the non-Jewish power structure. Troper 
gives a detailed account of the neo-Nazi rally planned to take 
place at Toronto’s Allan Gardens on May 30, 1965. This inci-
dent reveals the “never again” determination of the survivors, 
who believed that their Jewish leaders were negligent. Troper 
argues that the Allen Gardens incident and its aftermath helped 
to bring a new kind of “in your face” activism onto the Canadian 
Jewish landscape. 
With the groundwork laid and the players in place, 
Troper set the stage for the issue he sees as central to the new 
agenda that emerged for Canadian Jewry during the 1960s. 
Troper had originally intended that this issue, the Canadian 
Jewish response to the 1967 Six-Day War, should be the single 
focus of his book. He later decided that a broader perspective 
was necessary to an appreciation of the distinctive character of 
284    CJS/ÉJC
Canadian Jewry as it emerged during the 1960s. Nonetheless, 
Troper argues that the Six-Day War was the pivotal point 
of the “defining decade”. Just when the invisible walls, that 
had continued to keep Jews out of the top WASP law firms, 
social gatherings and country clubs, had really begun to 
crumble, and community leadership had begun to worry about 
assimilation, visceral fear for Israel’s survival galvanized 
Jews across the country. There was a close to universal “gut 
certainty that one’s own fate was inseparable from that of Israel 
and the Jewish people.” (129). Troper details the changes that 
this situation brought about within community leadership struc-
tures, on campuses, and in relationships with former partners 
such as the United Church. He further devotes his next chapter, 
entitled “Prestige Pride”, to the effects of the Six-Day War 
victory. These include the creation of a Jewish lobby as well 
as substantial increases in day school attendance, tourism to 
Israel, and Jewish student demand for university-level Jewish 
studies courses. Another consequence of the Israeli victory was 
the emergence of divergent opinion both within and outside 
Israel, as to how best to handle the territory conquered in 
the war. 
The final two chapters before the Conclusion of The 
Defining Decade are entitled “The Maddest and Most Passionate 
Fling”, which focuses on Pierre Trudeau and his government, 
and “Let Them Have It”, looking at the ways in which the 
Jewish community developed and demonstrated a new tough-
ness and backbone, “no more silent Jews”. Troper’s conclusions 
remain open-ended. On the one hand, he demonstrates that the 
sixties brought renewal and strength to Canada’s Jews. This 
included a shift from remembering to doing, from being Jewish, 
to “doing Jewish”. For the new generation, there was a new 
level of engagement: “being Jewish was not what they inherited 
from parents; it was what they wanted for their children.” At the 
same time, many of the issues raised by the sixties, about Israel, 
about intra-community relations, inter-community relations and 
others, remain unresolved. 
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   285 
Two outstanding features of The Defining Decade are 
its use of sources and its style. Troper makes skilful use of 
newspapers, journals, archives and personal papers as well as 
over 75 interviews with a wide range of participants. This gives 
texture and credibility to the stories he tells by adding anecdotes 
and perspectives from “the street”. As well, Troper brings us 
behind-the-scenes at the centres of power, thanks to archival 
research supplemented by interviews with government minis-
ters and community leaders. Among others, Troper recounts 
several anecdotes about Pierre Trudeau. He also tells the story, 
for the first time publicly in this book, of the Trudeau govern-
ment’s negotiations with Iraq, to bring Iraqi Jews to Canada. 
Troper’s account details the Trudeau government’s persistence 
and eventual success in reaching an agreement with the govern-
ment of Iraq. However, this plan was superseded by events and 
was not carried out. Even when he does not bring new material, 
Troper’s succinct and lively retellings of key events are impor-
tant. These include large issues such as that of Soviet Jewry, or 
the schools issue in Québec. Troper also knows how to use the 
detail of specific, smaller-scale events to illustrate larger themes 
that reveal leadership structures and community functioning. 
This is the case in Troper’s focus on the Reverend A.C. Forrest, 
influential editor of the United Church Observer. Forrest’s 
editorials critical of Israel caused a rift between the Jewish 
community and its former ally, the United Church. Another 
example is Troper’s account of how the Jewish community 
pressured Toronto’s exclusive Granite Club to change its prac-
tice of excluding Jews. 
The Defining Decade is an important addition to the over-
view books on Canadian Jewish life that include Tulchinsky’s 
Taking Root (1997) and Branching Out (1998), and his update 
of these books in A People’s Journey (2008), Weinfeld’s Like 
Everyone Else but Different (2001) and, though its focus is 
narrower, Bialystock’s Delayed Impact (2000). All of these 
books, as well as Troper and Abella’s 1982 classic None is Too 
Many, are written by Canadian Jewish scholars of Canadian 


English

Troper, Harold. The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s.

 ,  

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The loss of Chava Rosenfarb in early 2011 gave this issue of 
Canadian Jewish Studies a new urgency. We had already begun 
collecting papers for the issue, some of which were presented at a 
special session on Rosenfarb at a conference of the Association 
for Canadian Jewish Studies held in Montreal in 2010. Editing 
these papers to put Rosenfarb in the past tense was a sad experi-
ence. Immigrant, Yiddish-speaking culture can still be studied, 
but we are fast losing our direct connection to this past with the 
passing of the Holocaust refugee and survivor generation.
The investigation of Yiddish in Canada is in its infancy. 
This collection is an effort to bring together some of the 
researchers who are currently working in the field. The papers 
gathered here show that there is a great variety of ways to 
approach Yiddish in Canada: through statistical analysis, inter-
views, close readings of texts, archival research, and through 
making connections between these modes of analysis. We thank 
these writers for their fruitful endeavors. We are indebted to the 
anonymous reviewers, whose comments allowed the writers to 
bring their best ideas forward. Eiran Harris’ compendium of 
Hebrew and Yiddish printed matter will, we hope, stimulate 
interest and further study, and we thank him for allowing us to 
publish it here.
We also appreciate the support and help of incoming 
journal editors Stephanie Tara Schwartz and David Koffman; 
book review editor Ira Robinson; association president Randall 
Schnoor; translator Chantal Fournier; graphic artist Teresa 
Lynne; and zachary Baker, Richard Menkis, and Brad Sabin 
Hill, who offered editorial advice and assistance. The Jewish 
1
Public Library, in Montreal, and the Jewish Heritage Centre of 
Western Canada, in Winnipeg, have been consistently helpful in 
fact-checking and providing photographs.
Finally, we have dedicated this volume to the memory of 
Naomi Kadar, an inspired and inspiring New York-based teacher 
who, over the years, taught numerous young researchers how to 
make Yiddish a part of themselves. May her memory be a blessing.
Faith Jones
Rebecca Margolis
2


Introduction and Acknowledgements

Margolis, Rebecca

Chava Rosenfarb’s Yiddish Montreal

Brodt, Shirley Muhlstock

260    CJS/ÉJC
like Toronto and Windsor. Since no group lives in a bubble, it 
would have been worthwhile learning more about these types 
of interactions and connections in order to get a more complete 
snapshot of their experiences. This work does, however, fill a 
major gap within the literature by revealing the untold stories of 
London’s Jews, and one can hope that in the future more stud-
ies of this kind, documenting the histories of other significant 
communities in Ontario like Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, St. 
Catharines and others, will be told. 
Ellen Scheinberg
Goodman, Joseph J. Collected Writings. Hannah Berliner 
Fischthal, translator. Harriet Goodman Hoffman, editor. 
Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris Corporation, 2011. 337 pp.
In 1919, Joseph J. Goodman’s Gezamelte Shriften was published 
in Winnipeg. Eighty-five years later, Goodman’s grandniece 
discovered his book at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, 
Massachusetts, a discovery which led to its translation into 
English along with the addition by his granddaughters of 
background material and commentaries, and ultimately to the 
publication of Collected Writings.
Now in bilingual format, Gezamelte Shriften is a compi-
lation of Goodman’s poems, essays, stories, homilies, and 
observations on a wide range of topics. Goodman was a commit-
ted Jew and zionist, a romantic and a humourist, a philosopher 
and an astute observer of people and places—these qualities 
permeate his writings, providing us with a sense of the life lived 
by Jews in the early twentieth century in Western Canada.
Born in Ukraine, in the Pale of Settlement, in or around 
1863, Goodman saw the Jews’ suffering and poverty, and it is 
likely that he lived through several pogroms while in his teens. The 
horrific conditions that he both witnessed and endured seem to 
have shaped his world view and informed much of his writings.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, he emigrated 
to the United States and in 1901 moved to Canada, taking up 
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   261 
residence in Winnipeg. His position as an immigration officer 
for the Canadian Pacific Railway provided him the opportunity 
to travel through the Prairie Provinces, where he invariably 
sought out his fellow Jews, the vast majority of whom were 
recent immigrants from Russia and other lands hostile to 
Jews. Mirrored in some of Goodman’s writings are feelings of 
despondency and loneliness—inevitable accompaniments to the 
immigrant experience—as well as his suffering and concern for 
the wellbeing of his fellow Jews. Yet, Goodman the optimist 
writes in “Instead of a Foreword”: 
“Oppressed by despair and exile:—
The groans of our brothers,
Their woes, their grief, and their loneliness…
I hope as a citizen
There in the new world of the Jew,
To sing you once more a song of peace and unity 
and joy,
To sing a song of freedom!...”
Of particular interest to Canadian readers are Goodman’s 
reports on his visits to the cities and farming colonies. Often 
humourous, always informative, this portion of his writings 
provides atmosphere that complements scholarly works in this area 
of Canadian Jewish history. Here, Goodman’s high-spiritedness 
and exuberance shine through captivated as he was by the warmth 
and accomplishments of the Jews in the cities and colonies.
In Sonnenfeld Colony, he attended a Chanukah festival, 
after which he felt “intensely jealous of the happiness of the 
Jewish colonists.” Despite the hardships faced by the farmers in 
Montefiore Colony, Goodman found a “strong optimism.” 
Goodman was impressed by Calgary’s Jewish commu-
nity, commenting favourably on their charitable works. He 
had occasion while there to attend a lecture by the eminent Dr. 
Benzion Mossinson, a Hebrew educator and zionist leader who 
had travelled from Eretz Yisrael to North America to speak on 
the zionist movement. Goodman also found much to extol about 
Edmonton the city and in particular its Jewish community.


Goodman, Joseph J. Collected Writings.

Jones, Faith

“Everybody Comes to the Store: People’s Book Store as Third Place, 1910-1920”

Frager, Ruth A.

 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   253 
avec celui de la communauté juive qui, dans ses autres textes, 
constitue un incubateur ou bouillonnent divers courants d’idées 
modernes, libérales et progressistes. Anctil se réfère peu aux tra-
vaux récents sur l’américanité, le libéralisme et le radicalisme 
politique qui, sans faire du Québec une société résolument ratta-
chée aux idéaux de la « Modernité », ne se caractérisait pas pour 
autant par un monolithisme idéologique. Hormis cet aspect, ce 
texte offre un survol fort pertinent des rapports entre les franco-
phones et les Juifs en s’appuyant sur des sources historiques yid-
dish. Ce texte pose également un regard ec1airant sur la nature 
de l’antisémitisme au Québec. 
Malgré ces critiques qui n’entament pas la qualité géné-
rale de l’ouvrage, nous témoignons que la dernière publication 
de Pierre Anctil atteint ses objectifs en définissent les para-
mètres d’un objet d’étude, émancipé d’une vision qui pouvait 
être qualifiée auparavant de courte vue, qui donne la pleine me-
sure d’un potentiel de compréhension approfondie de la société 
montréalaise et québécoise et des rapports complexes entre la 
majorité francophone et les communautés culturelles, d’hier à 
aujourd’hui. Bref, la communauté juive en tant qu’objet d’étude 
se destine à un avenir prometteur. 
Jean-Phillipe Croteau
Université de Hearst
Berson, Seemah C., ed. I Have a Story to Tell You. Waterloo, 
Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010. xxvi + 285 pp.
Seemah C. Berson’s I Have a Story to Tell You consists of a series 
of detailed interviews with Jews who fled to Canada from Eastern 
Europe during the first three decades of the twentieth century. 
Berson interviewed these immigrants in the mid-1970s, and in 
this collection, she has kept herself in the background, enabling the 
interviewees’ own stories to emerge virtually on their own. Their 
accounts are engaging, indeed fascinating, as well as informative. 
As Berson explains in the book’s brief introduction, 
when she began the whole project her main concern was to 
254    CJS/ÉJC
determine why so many Jewish immigrants went into the cloth-
ing industry. But she became more concerned “to portray the 
panorama of Jewish life at the turn of the twentieth century, 
both in the Old Country and here in Canada.” Instead of 
regarding the interviews as a way to gather useful information, 
she “began to see [herself] as a funnel or channel through 
which the lives and struggles of [her] subjects could be written 
down.” (xix) 
Berson provides us with the accounts of almost forty 
interviewees, many of whom eventually worked in the cloth-
ing industry in Montreal, Toronto, or Winnipeg. Many of these 
men and women have vividly portrayed the harshness of their 
lives in Eastern Europe, including their families’ struggles to 
earn a meagre living and the impact of rampant antisemitism. 
There are haunting tales of acute deprivation and desperation. 
Some individuals have described hiding during pogroms, and 
some have highlighted the harrowing effects of the massive 
dislocations of Jews and others during the First World War. The 
poignant accounts of the interviewees have invariably testified 
to the crucial importance of extended family ties amidst all the 
poverty and antisemitism. People struggled to provide shelter 
for those family members who were even less fortunate, and, 
when they could, they helped family members gain access to 
training and jobs. Jews who were fortunate enough to have 
family members in the New World might receive money and 
packages from them, but this also led to resentment on the part 
of non-Jews. Yet some of the interviewees have also stressed 
that non-Jewish neighbours helped them dramatically. 
The pull of “America” was strong, and numerous 
interviewees declared that few of them distinguished between 
Canada and the United States. None of the interviewees have 
depicted a romanticized vision of the streets of the New World 
as paved with the proverbial gold. Instead, potential Jewish 
immigrants are portrayed as having had a more realistic view of 
the New World as offering both freedom from the more vicious 
forms of antisemitism and a better chance to earn a living. 
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   255 
When focusing on life in Canada, the interviewees 
repeatedly stressed poverty (especially inadequate food and 
over-crowded living quarters) that was often compounded 
by bouts of unemployment, particularly during the Great 
Depression. Many emphasized the difficulties of trying to eke 
out a living in the needle trades, including the incredibly low 
wages, long hours during seasonal peaks, and seasonal unem-
ployment. More than one interviewee described working day 
and night for a contractor who then refused to pay his workers. 
So why did so many immigrant Jews work in this sector? 
The interviewees have discussed many aspects of this question, 
stressing that, in the context of numerous antisemitic restric-
tions, many Jews had already become tailors in Eastern Europe. 
Others who needed to learn a trade in the New World found 
jobs in this sector through relatives who were already working 
in Canada’s clothing industry. This was an area where one could 
start to eke out a living without much training, in a context 
where Canadian antisemitism sharply limited the availability 
of other jobs. Interestingly, more than a few interviewees have 
stressed that some immigrant Jews entered this sector because it 
was relatively easy to scrape together enough money to become 
a clothing contractor. As one woman explained: “A miner could 
never dream of becoming a mine owner.... But a needle trades 
worker? Their psychology was not of a worker at that time. 
It was a psychology that some day I’ll get out and become an 
employer myself—which is what a lot of them did.” (244) 
Nevertheless, this book stresses that, faced with such 
harsh conditions in the clothing sector, many workers fought 
back. Although a few of the interviewees were neither ardent 
trade unionists nor political activists, most were. In fact, many 
of these men and women were linked to the Communist Party, 
a fact that Berson should have made clear at the outset. Indeed 
her introduction should have explained how she had selected the 
particular individuals to interview. 
These leftists spoke avidly about the tough struggles for 
better wages and working conditions in the needle trades. They 
256    CJS/ÉJC
stressed the poverty that made it so hard for hungry strikers to 
hold out, and they described situations where Jewish bosses 
hired gangsters to beat up striking workers. They highlighted 
the building of unions and the concrete gains that they won 
over time. At the same time, a number of interviewees also 
focused on the battles between Communist Jews and anti-
Communist Jews in the labour movement in this sector. The 
accounts of these internecine feuds are engrossing, but, given 
the Communist leanings of the interviewees, these accounts 
are one-sided.
The interviews also provide information about women’s 
roles, and, in fact, almost half of the interviewees are female. 
While some of the interviewees have discussed women’s 
paid labour matter-of-factly, suggesting that it was accepted 
among immigrant Jews, others have declared that at that time, 
“it wasn’t the style for women to work” after marriage. (263) 
Clearly married women pitched in when their menfolk were 
not earning enough for the family’s needs. Indeed one woman 
has described taking in sewing work when she was bedridden 
while trying to avoid a miscarriage. She also recalled that during 
certain strikes, the women would step in to drive scabs away 
“because the police would not do the things to girls that they 
would do to the men.” (209)
This book is far less informative with regard to religion, 
for many of the interviewees defined themselves as progressive, 
secular Jews. Nevertheless, the dearth of material on religious 
issues is unfortunate, particularly since Berson has stated in the 
book’s brief conclusion that one of her three main areas of inter-
est focused on the adjustments immigrant Jews made in Canada. 
In short, Berson’s edited collection provides many 
fascinating and informative first-hand accounts of the lives of 
immigrant Jewish men and women in this period. Despite some 
limitations, this collection is very rich. 
Ruth A. Frager
McMaster University


Berson, Seemah C., ed. I Have a Story to Tell You.

Robinson, Ira

Yehuda Kaufman’s Montreal Journalism, 1913-1917

270    CJS/ÉJC
the categorization, this is an eclectic volume. The disparate 
articles are united by their CSJS and ACJS origins, and speak 
well for the quality of the Canadian conferences at which they 
were presented and for the health of contemporary Jewish stud-
ies in Canada.
Ira Robinson
Concordia University
Margolis, Rebecca. Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish 
Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-
Queens University Press, 2011. xxii + 293pp.
This study is the first to consider the phenomenon of Yiddish in 
Montreal comprehensively. Margolis sets out to understand 
how it is both the same as and different from Yiddish cultural 
activity elsewhere. “On the surface, Yiddish Montreal appeared 
to be a smaller version of Yiddish New York, separated by a 
generation gap,” she says (35). But this formulation, she shows, 
minimizes a central difference. The generation that elapsed 
between the major immigration of Eastern European Jews to 
New York and that which saw a large number arrive in Montreal 
was a crucial period. “Montreal’s Yiddish immigration took 
place largely after 1905, by which time Yiddish cosmopolitan-
ism had been supplanted by nationalist ideologies” (36). In 
addition, immigrants to Montreal encountered a uniquely bilin-
gual city in which the contested arena of linguistic domination 
threw up roadblocks to newcomers. Catholic French-speakers 
and Protestant English-speakers had separate school systems, 
neither of which could easily accommodate non-Christians. 
This served to bolster independent community organizations (in 
this case, schools) that fostered Jewish particularity, delaying 
assimilation and producing a multi-faceted, intellectually and 
emotionally satisfying cultural life. “While a mainstream 
American Yiddish press promoted Americanization, Montreal 
intellectuals such as pedagogue Shloime Wiseman (1899-1985) 
advocated an ’invented yidishkayt’ ” )31(.
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   271 
Margolis focuses on the community organizations that 
fulfilled this mission in chapters devoted to the press, literary 
activity, schools, and theatre. The book is based on Margolis’ 
Columbia University doctoral dissertation, but she has usefully 
reorganized the material to create chapters that cohere themati-
cally. The chapter on Montreal’s long-running Yiddish daily, 
the Keneder Adler, shows how this profit-making enterprise 
was able to support and sustain less commercial cultural venues, 
while itself making specific contributions that were both literary 
and social. The Adler specifically attempted to unite Jews and 
minimize ideological differences between them, and to show 
new immigrants how to be Canadian. But it also published 
modern literature and groomed a literate, Jewishly-oriented 
reading public, while simultaneously supporting Yiddish writ-
ers financially. 
The chapter on the Yiddish theatre shows the other end 
of the spectrum. Financially non-viable from its beginning to 
the present day, the Yiddish theatre survived through individual 
and organizational sponsorships. There were only a few years 
in which one troupe (Yidishe teater grupe, or YTEG, under 
Chayele Grober) was able to produce serious, original art, 
while the majority of theatrical performances were imported, 
lightweight, popular entertainments. Although Grober’s work 
won excellent reviews and praise from the local intelligentsia, 
the theatre’s fate was sealed when the Workmen’s Circle 
declined to subsidize it. While Margolis says Grober success-
fully “created an interested and discerning public, albeit a small 
elite in the Jewish community” (185), it was clearly not in 
the same league as the Adler which reached thousands of 
households every day. (It is interesting to consider that in the 
years since YTEG closed in 1942, the press and the theatre 
have reversed positions. Nowadays the ability to read and write 
Yiddish is so atrophied that Yiddish periodicals live off donors, 
or simply die. It is the theatre, with its additional expressive 
capacities in sound, movement, facial expression—not to 
mention the ability to sub-title—which is more accessible to 
272    CJS/ÉJC
the average person and more likely to be sought out by a non-
scholarly Jewish public.)
Margolis states several times that her goal is to inves-
tigate a minor centre of a minority culture and to see what 
conditions allowed it to foster continuity in Canada. She is a 
cautious scholar and does not argue beyond her evidence, but it 
seems clear from the picture she presents that the “minor” centre 
of Montreal produced a more resilient and lasting connection 
to Yiddish than a “major” centre such as New York did. This 
was effected through a combination of purposeful, ideological 
impetus (such as Wiseman’s “invented yidishkayt”) and sheer 
luck in terms of personalities and situation. The development of 
Jewish Montreal’s robust institutional infrastructure may have 
grown from a doubly-exclusionary, pre-existing French-English 
tension, but it laid the groundwork for cultural maintenance to 
a greater degree than could be anticipated. Individuals such as 
Hirsch Wolofsky, the Adler editor who refrained from endors-
ing divisive political positions (to the great irritation of many 
radical readers), exerted an influence that proved useful for the 
longevity of Yiddish culture. Among the literati emerged a clear 
leader, J.I. Segal, who “fostered the development of a local liter-
ary milieu” (78), mentoring other writers and demanding a high 
quality product from them. These factors produced not only 
artists and activists but an engaged, culturally literate public 
which expected and demanded yet more cultural product.
Some of the phenomena Margolis investigates are 
almost impossible to research, leading to unavoidable lacunae in 
places. As she herself notes in what must count as the best foot-
note in Canadian Jewish scholarship, “While material abounds 
on famous visitors who graced the Yiddish stage, documenta-
tion on local theatre made up of volunteer actors and running 
on low budgets is scarce, as is the glamour that has made the 
professional theatre such a fruitful area of study” (231, n. 29). 
The study of audiences and readers faces similar constraints, 
and Margolis is as hampered by this dynamic as other scholars. 
However, in other areas where we could expect to find cracks, 
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   273 
there is actually a fair bit of material. Informal literary activity, 
relationships between writers, the effects of the secular Yiddish 
schools on their graduates, and other such phenomena all yield 
quite rich material from memoirs and the press. Margolis pieces 
her sources together with great skill. Overall, this study admira-
bly fills a gap which has truly hampered the study of Canadian 
Jewry, and does so lucidly and readably.
Faith Jones
University of British Columbia
Mendelson, Alan. Exiles From Nowhere: the Jews and the 
Canadian Elite. Montréal : R. Brass Studio, 2008. xviii + 
411 pp.
Alan Mendelson’s Exiles From Nowhere has two aims. One is to 
examine the pervasive antisemitism displayed by the Canadian 
elite from the late nineteenth century through the aftermath of 
World War II. The other is to explore how growing up in this 
milieu molded the noted Canadian intellectual George Grant on 
issues regarding Jews and Judaism. The result is a fascinating 
and heartbreaking book.
Mendelson states at the outset that “words have power” 
(xvii); he then goes on to follow the spoken and written words 
of the Canadian elite and their ripple effects upon history. In 
pursuing his investigation, Mendelson introduces his readers to 
the men and women of money, class, and intellect who wielded 
influence on the world around them, including Goldwin Smith, 
Vincent Massey, Waldorf and Nancy Astor, and William Lyon 
Mackenzie King. The reader is introduced to a world of deep-
seated “genteel” antisemitism, in which a deep disdain for both 
Judaism as a religion and Jews as a people suffused people’s 
thoughts and actions, even as they distanced themselves from 
the more overt, “vulgar” antisemitism of direct violence, 
destruction of property, and assault. With persuasive attention 
to detail, Mendelson demonstrates “that genteel antisemitism 
had tangible consequences in the real world” (3). Words spoken 


Margolis, Rebecca. Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945.

Jacobson, Maxine

278    CJS/ÉJC
qui répétait des données déjà connues, était nécessaire. Olaza-
bal, nous l’avons écrit, aurait pu utiliser plusieurs de ces pages 
pour rallonger le chapitre cinq, très intéressant, et original. Il 
aurait aussi pu donner plus d’informations sur les troisième et 
quatrième générations, qui ne sont qu’effleurées. Nous trouvons 
aussi que l’auteur aurait pu être plus transparent sur son proces-
sus d’entrevues. Plusieurs questions se posent en effet : combien 
de personnes a-t-il interrogées? Combien de chaque génération? 
Comment sont-elles reparties quant à l’age, le sexe, et d’autres 
données démographiques pertinentes? 
Même si les trois premiers chapitres manquent d’origi-
nalité, le bon côté de la médaille est que l’une des forces du 
livre réside justement dans la volonté louable de l’auteur de 
faire connaître succinctement la communauté juive ashkénaze 
à des francophones non-juifs, le lectorat ciblé. Etant un excel-
lent condense des connaissances sur l’histoire et la culture des 
Ashkénazes, en Europe et à Montréal, ces chapitres constituent 
une très bonne entrée en matière pour quiconque débute dans le 
domaine des études juives. Le fait qu’Olazabal ne soit pas juif et 
qu’il ait dû se renseigner sur les concepts et les termes relatifs a 
la vie juive a certainement influencé sa manière d’écrire ce livre; 
ainsi, il ne prend pas pour acquis que le lecteur est déjà initié 
aux pratiques et idées qu’il décrit, et qu’il prend donc la peine 
d’expliquer, de manière didactique. 
Marylin Bernard
Université Concordia
Sivak, Max (Motl) and Jennie (Chienke). Chienke’s Motl and 
Motl’s Chienke: A Twentieth Century Story. North York: 
Mantua Books, 2011. 163 pp.
Max (Motl) and Jennie (Chienke) Sivak were two poor immi-
grants, whose families ended up in Montreal after fleeing 
pogroms in Europe. They attempted, through their memoirs, to 
produce a description of their entire life, from their childhood in 
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   279 
Ukrainian and Lithuanian shtels, to their involvement in zionist 
youth movements in Montreal, to the kibbutzim of Palestine and 
back to the Diaspora in Montreal. Each phase of their life was a 
struggle, and each stage required the same pioneering approach, 
hard work and Jewish sense of purpose. 
Their son, Dr. Jacob Sivak translated the memoirs from 
Yiddish to English, adding his own thoughts and placing his 
parent’s story into the context of the historic, political and 
social background of the Jewish people. His commentary about 
the places, people and events in Eastern Europe, Palestine, and 
Canada is interesting and valuable.
Motl grew up in Monasstrische, a province of Kiev, 
where he lived through robbery, rape, murder, and torture. 
During a pogrom, Motl’s brother, Avrum, and his grandmother, 
Baile, were killed. When this tragedy befell his family, Motl’s 
family fled to Romania, where whole families lived in wooden 
bunks, with little to eat. The Romanian government soon tired 
of the Russian emigrants and gave them an ultimatum to leave 
or be expelled back to Russia. In 1923 Motl and his family came 
to Canada.
 Chienke was born in Pilvishok, Lithuania, then part 
of the Russia. Chienke recalled the hard and dangerous life in 
her shetl, winter in shacks, lack of food, and the burning of her 
shtetl, Pilvishok, by the Germans, during World War I. Her 
father died leaving eight children in dire circumstances. Like 
Motl, she was exposed in the shtetl to zionist movements such 
as Hechalutz, and Hashomer Hatzair. Training in Hashomer 
Hatzair prepared her for pioneering life in Palestine. However, 
life took its course and she went to Canada in 1925, when she 
was fifteen.
 Life-long dreams about moving to Eretz Israel 
were planted in the shtetl. This story concentrates 
on left wing zionist ideology, but Dr. Sivak does 
give an overview of the other zionist move-
ments. Once in Montreal, Motl started to agitate 
for chalutziut; this ideology was directed toward 
280    CJS/ÉJC
the development of kibbutzim in Palestine. Motl 
joined the Poele Zion while Chienke organized 
a new Poele Zion socialist youth movement; the 
difference between the two groups was the rela-
tive degree of Marxism.
Motl, at eighteen years old, went to Western Canada to 
volunteer as a laborer on a wheat farm, where he worked long, 
hard hours, in preparation for being a farmer in Palestine. When 
he returned to Montreal, he took evening courses in mechanics 
and blueprint reading as further preparation for a pioneer life. 
Chienke was involved in planning a new chalutz movement to be 
directed by Canadian youth for which she provided educational 
leadership. She was instrumental in developing a non-Marxist 
zionist group, based on the writings and philosophy of the well- 
known Hebrew writer A.D. Gordon, which is still a central 
feature of the Montreal Labor zionist scene and an important 
source for the contemporary Naamat organization. In 1931-2 
they helped set up a summer camp in the Laurentians to provide 
chalutziut experience for children. This was the beginning of 
Undzer Camp, which was supported by Poele Zion members. 
Motl left for Palestine at nineteen, entering on a tourist 
visa, as Britain restricted entry for immigrants, and was apart 
from Chienke for a year. He then experienced the hardships of 
life in Palestine and the complexities of kibbutz life. The heat, 
barren landscape, gloomy political situation, lack of modern 
conveniences, lack of money, low standard of hygiene , inade-
quate roads for travel, and the constant threat of Arab hostilities 
were coupled with lots of singing and dancing. Life in the 
kibbutz was work, politics, oneg shabbats and classical music. 
Motl and Chienke were exposed to interesting people such as, 
Dr. Yehuda Kaufman, the Hebrew writer, Chaim Greenberg, 
leader of Poale Zion, Yosef Sprinzak , first speaker of the 
Knesset, and Chaim Nachman Bialik. Motl met Ben Gurion. It 
was here in Palestine that Motl and Chienke got married, with 
a borrowed ring, Motl wearing khaki shorts, Chienke wearing a 
blue skirt and white blouse.
 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus   281 
In keeping with the Jewish National Fund’s philosophy 
that there should be Jewish laborers, Motl, now called Mordechai, 
worked in construction, though he had no formal construction 
experience. Of course, both Mordechai and Chienke were also 
involved in defense and guard duty. 
Unhappiness with rival factions in the kibbutz added 
to the hardships and led them to try private life in Haifa. They 
rented a room with a tiny kitchenette where they shared a shower 
and a toilet with four families. It was difficult to maintain a job 
outside of the kibbutzim and there was not enough food to eat. 
Hence, when parents sent tickets, they returned to Montreal for 
a visit; but the year was 1939 and with the advent of World War 
II, they could not return to Palestine. 
In Montreal difficult times continued; they lost a one-
month-old baby boy and Motl could not get permanent work 
until he got a job as superintendent at Adath Israel Congregation. 
He remained at the synagogue for thirteen years where he had a 
good relationship with the clergy and congregation, but eventu-
ally left his position and synagogue apartment to go out on his 
own in the installment merchant business, known as custom 
peddling. Custom peddlers represent an aspect of Jewish history 
in Montreal, a niche of business no longer in existence. 
They did return to visit Israel in their older years. 
Chienke died in Montreal and Motl, at eighty-nine, moved to 
Toronto to be with his children. It is a story of idealism meet-
ing reality, of having a dream, but being unable to live it. The 
main point of the memoirs, according to their son, is that they 
remained chalutzim in all phases of their life.
Maxine Jacobson
Troper, Harold. The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the 
Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s. Toronto: University 
of Toronto Press, 2010. xi + 356 pp.
Harold Troper’s latest book, The Defining Decade: Identity, 
Politics and the Canadian Jewish community in the 1960s, 


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