Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil by Rebecca Margolis

You could also check out our suite of episodes on Anti-Semitism: Episode 34: White Jews, Whiteness, and Anti-Semitism and Episode 36: Understanding Anti-Semitism. If you want to read more about Anti-Blackness within Jewish communities and efforts to confront it, listen to Short: Jews for Black Lives with Shoshana Brown, which includes a discussion about the Institutional Jewish Community’s condemnation of the Movement for Black Lives and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)’s weekly ‘Jews for Black Lives’ actions across New York City.

We reflect on the legacy of Montreal’s Yom Kippur Ball and try to get to the bottom of an instance of vandalism at an Illinois Chabbad Centre. In Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil, Rebecca Margolis shows that the city's vibrant Yiddish culture is the legacy of a driven group of the city's Jews who devoted themselves to the revitalization of the Jewish community, creating a long-lasting infrastructure and institutions that have bolstered Yiddish identity. On this episode, we talk about the Montreal businessman being called the ‘Jewish Schindler’ and break our promise to stop talking about the Canadian election. In Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil, Rebecca Margolis shows that Montreal’s vibrant Yiddish culture is the legacy of a driven group of the city’s Jews who devoted themselves to the revitalization of the Jewish community, creating a long-lasting infrastructure and institutions that have bolstered Yiddish identity. Weinfeld has also prepared a detailed bibliography of Rosenberg's social scientific works on Canadian Jewish life.Erika Davis, who runs the blog Black Gay and Jewish, talks about the work she’s doing to fight racism in the Jewish community with the Jewish Multiracial Network. It includes a new introductory essay by Morton Weinfeld, who focuses on Rosenberg's life, the era, and the relevance of the book for today's readers. This new edition is a facsimile which faithfully reproduces Rosenberg's meticulous compilation of statistics. His comparative approach, with Canadian Jews compared wherever possible to other ethnic or religious groups in Canada and to diaspora Jewish communities elsewhere, is a major strength of the work. Rosenberg drew his information from the Canadian census of 1931 and previous census records, statistical material from other studies collected by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, and international data sources. Originally published in 1939 by the Canadian Jewish Congress in Montreal, Canada's Jews has long been out-of-print. It provides a comprehensive portrait of a community struggling with the insecurities of recent immigration, the early seductions of assimilation, and a second-class status sustained by anti-Semitism. Louis Rosenberg's Canada's Jews is a pioneering study of the demographic, sociological, cultural, and economic dimensions of Canadian Jewish life in the 1930s.

Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil by Rebecca Margolis