Photo credit: Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives
Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award
The ACJS established this award in 2001 to recognize the significant contribution by an individual, institution or group to the field of Canadian Jewish studies. In 2008 the award was named the Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award in honour of Louis Rosenberg, a pioneer in the social scientific study of Canada’s Jews.
About Louis Rosenberg
Born in Poland in 1893, Rosenberg moved with his family to England and studied at Leeds University, graduating in 1914. The following year he moved to Canada, where he served as the director of settlement of the Jewish Colonization Association from 1919 to 1940. While living in Saskatchewan, he became active in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and, writing under the pseudonym Watt Hugh McCollum, published a study of the concentration of wealth in Canada entitled Who Owns Canada? (1935, 1947).
By 1939, Rosenberg had turned his attention to the demographic study of Canadian Jewry. That year he published Canada’s Jews, his magnum opus, and in 1945 took up the position of national research director of the Bureau of Social and Economic Research at the Canadian Jewish Congress. Over next several years Rosenberg would produce a steady stream of social science work on Canadian Jews, drawing heavily on Canadian census data as well as his own surveys. Rosenberg died in 1987. His archives are located at Library and Archives Canada, in Ottawa, and the Canadian Jewish Archives, in Montreal.
Past Award Recipients
2025: Robert Brym
Robert Brym is the SD Clark Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of Toronto.
From his early work challenging conventional theories of intellectual life in revolutionary Russia to his sustained contributions to the sociological understanding of Jewish identity, Professor Brym has consistently pushed the boundaries of scholarly inquiry. In the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote several journal articles on intermarriage and antisemitism before publishing The Jews in Canada (1993), a foundational text in the discipline co-edited with Bill Shaffir and 2023 Rosenberg Award recipient Morton Weinfeld.
His research reached new heights with the first nationwide survey of Jews in Canada in 2018. That landmark project, and the subsequent publication The Ever-Dying People? Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective (2023) with 2024 Rosenberg Award recipient Randy Schnoor, have become essential resources for scholars and community leaders alike. These works offer unprecedented insight into Canadian Jewish life while situating it within both national and international contexts.
Professor Brym’s research is distinguished by its methodological rigor, comparative scope, and deep engagement with contemporary Jewish life. His work continues to shape public discourse and inform communal policy, particularly on issues of identity, intermarriage, antisemitism, and attitudes toward Israel. With new survey projects already underway, his contributions remain as vital as ever.
2024: Randal Schnoor
Randal Schnoor teaches sociology and Jewish studies at York University.
Schnoor’s early work was on the study of Jewish groups who were not always considered in the “mainstream” of Canadian Jewish studies. As an offshoot of his MA research at McMaster University, he published on the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Outremont. In his PhD, and in subsequent publications, he used a solid ethnographic approach to study aspects of the lives of gay Jewish men. Since then, he has examined the issue that is often at the centre of communal discussions and budgets, but rarely analyzed carefully: Jewish education.
In conjunction with foremost scholars of Jewish education, such as Jack Wertheimer and Alex Pomson, Schnoor hascarried out wide-ranging surveys of Jewish education and has published ethnographic micro-studies of Jewish schools and families. Among his monographs are Back to School: Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews (with Alex Pomson, 2008) and Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home (with Alex Pomson, 2018). Schnoor also co-edited, with Robert Brym, The Ever-Dying People? Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective.
Schnoor’s service is varied, but one commitment stands out. For nine years, between 2005 and 2014, he served as president of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, a time in which he fostered the growth of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies. Under Schnoor’s stewardship, the ACJS’s annual conference continued to draw in new members, especially graduate students. This service activity, on its own, was a major argument for conferring Schnoor the Rosenberg award.
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L’Association d’études juives canadiennes (AÉJC) a le plaisir d’annoncer que Randal Schnoor, de l’Université York, est le lauréat 2024 du Prix Louis Rosenberg pour services éminents en études juives canadiennes. M. Schnoor a apporté une contribution exceptionnelle aux études juives canadiennes par ses publications, son enseignement et ses services.
Les premiers travaux de M. Schnoor ont porté sur l’étude de groupes juifs qui n’étaient pas toujours considérés comme faisant partie du “courant principal” des études juives canadiennes. Dans le prolongement de son travail de maîtrise à McMaster, il a publié une étude sur les Juifs ultra-orthodoxes d’Outremont. Dans son doctorat et dans ses publications ultérieures, il a utilisé une approche ethnographique solide pour étudier certains aspects de la vie des hommes juifs homosexuels. Depuis, il s’est penché sur une question qui est souvent au centre des discussions et des budgets communautaires, mais qui est rarement analysée en profondeur : l’éducation juive. En collaboration avec d’éminents spécialistes de l’éducation juive, tels que Jack Wertheimer et Alex Pomson, M. Schnoor a réalisé d’importantes enquêtes de grande envergure sur l’éducation juive et a publié des micro-études ethnographiques sur les écoles et les familles juives. Parmi ses monographies, citons Pomson et Schnoor, Back to School : Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews (2008) et Pomson et Schnoor, Jewish Family : Identity and Self-Formation at Home (2018). Il a publié d’importants articles sur l’éducation ainsi que sur la démographie juive canadienne. Il a récemment coédité, avec Robert Brym, The Ever-Dying People ? Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective, qui appelle à davantage de travaux comparatifs entre les Juifs et les autres minorités ethnoreligieuses au Canada. En plus d’être co-auteur de l’introduction de l’ouvrage, M. Schnoor a contribué à un chapitre très pertinent sur l’éducation juive.
Les services rendus par M. Schnoor sont variés, mais un engagement se démarque. Pendant neuf ans, entre 2005 et 2014, il a été président de l’Association des études juives canadiennes. Pendant cette période, il a stimulé la progression de la revue Canadian Jewish Studies ainsi que de la lettre d’information et de la liste de diffusion. La conférence annuelle a continué à attirer de nouveaux membres, en particulier des étudiants diplômés. Cette activité de service, à elle seule, a été un argument majeur pour conférer à M. Schnoor le prix Rosenberg.
Nos remerciements les plus sincères vont au Dr Schnoor pour son travail exceptionnel dans notre domaine, et nos félicitations pour l’attribution du prix Louis Rosenberg.
2023: Morton Weinfeld
2022: Michael Brown
2021: Frank Bialystok
2019: Norma Baumel Joseph
2018: Richard Menkis
2017: Ruth Panofsky
2016: Janice Rosen
2015: Pierre Anctil
2014: Adam Fuerstenberg
2013: Ira Robinson
2012: Harold Troper
2011: Marcia Koven
2010: Eiran Harris
2009: Seymour Mayne
2008: Seymour Levitan
2007: Cyril E. Leonoff
2006: Irving Abella
2005: Gerald Tulchinsky
2004: Abraham Arnold
2003: Ruth Goldbloom
2002: Rabbi Gunther Plaut
2001: Miriam Waddington
Marcia Koven Award for Best Student Paper
Instituted in 2011, the Marcia Koven Award for best student paper is awarded annually at the ACJS’s scholars. conference “best student paper” award was named the “Marcia Koven Award.” Born in 1926, Koven was the founder of the Saint John Jewish Historical Society and founder of the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum. She received the Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award in 2011. This award is sponsored by friends and relatives of Marcia Koven and the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum. There is a cash prize associated with this award.
2024:
Noa Billick, Toronto Metropolitan University, “What Kind of Book are You?: The People of the Book, Communication, and Survival”
2023:
Sigred Thomsen, University of Vienna, “I’m Growing Where I’m Going to Grow and That’s in Multiple Directions”: Fluidities of Genre and Identity in Shiva Baby and Periphery“
Honourable mention: Aaliah Lewis, York University, “Understanding the Complex Identity of Black Jews in Canada and the US”
Honourable mention: Rebecca Mintz, York University, “Eating Disorders and Orthodox Jewish Life: Navigating the Conflict between Jewish Identity and Mental Health”
2022:
Tyler Wentzell, University of Toronto, “‘The Vanguard of the Vanguard of the Vanguard’: Revolutionary Jewish Youth in Interwar Toronto, Montreal, and New York.
Honourable mention: Sean Remz, Concordia University, “The Hungarian Martyrs Synagogue and its Sisterhood: A Locus Holocaust Commemoration Avant la Lettre”
Honourable mention: Emily Belmonte, York University, “Gender and the Canadian Jewish Fur Trader Experience: Expansion and Colonialism in British North America, 1759-1812”
2021:
Winner: Nathan Lucky
Honourable mention: Kenneth Grad
Honourable mention: Elizabeth Moorhouse-Stein
2019:
Winner: Heather Munro
Honourable mention: Rotem Fellus
2018:
Winner: Magdalene Klassen
Honourable mention: Vardit Lightstone
Honourable mention: Christopher Chanco
2017:
Gesa Trojan, Technische Universität Berlin, “‘Add Matzo Meal and Stir Well’: Food as a Practice and a Representation of Urban Jewishness in Interwar Toronto”
Honourable mention: Simon-Pierre Lacasse, University of Ottawa, “À la croisée de la Révolution tranquille et du judaïsme orthodoxe: l’implantation de la communauté hassidique des Tasher au coeur du Québec francophone et catholique (1962-1967)”
2016:
Lindsay Jackson, Concordia University, “Bloodless Bris: Intactivism and Brit Shalom in the Montreal Jewish Community”
Honourable mention: Daniel Simeone, McGill University, “In Prison for Debt: Jewish Debtors in the Montreal District Prison between 1865 and 1900”
Honourable mention: Yosef Robinson, Concordia University, “‘Rewritten Bibles’ in Modern Canadian Literature”
2015:
Antoine Burgard, UQÀM / Université Lumière Lyon 2, “Entre exigences administratives et attentes de la communauté, le Congrès Juif Canadien et l’immigration d’orphelins de la Shoah depuis l’Europe de l’immédiat après-guerre”
Rebecca Margolis and Meghan Cavanagh, University of Ottawa, “Canadian Yiddish in the Internet Age”
Honourable mention: Yosef Robinson, Concordia University, “Montreal’s Keneder Odler in the 1920s and 1930s”
2014:
SJ Kerr-Lapsley, McGill University, “Roots, Routes and Bridges: An Introduction to the Involvement of Holocaust Survivors in Holocaust Education in Vancouver”
Honourable mention: Allie Cuperfain, Ryerson University, “The Identities of Toronto: An Analysis of UJA’s Annual Campaign 2012”
2013:
Amy Coté, University of Victoria, “Analyzing Stories: (Re-)Reading Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces after the I-Witness Field School”
Honourable mention: Maxa Sawyer, York University, “The Voices of Birthright Israel: Going Beyond the Jewish Homeland Narrative to Create a Realistic Relationship between the Jewish Canadian Diaspora and Israel”
2012:
Kata Bohus, Central European University, “Standing Together or Staying Apart? Contradictions of Integration among 1956-er Hungarian Jewish Refugees in Toronto”
Honourable mention: Faith Jones, University of British Columbia, “Grade’s Quarrel in Montreal”
2011:
Adara Goldberg, Clark University, “Left in the West: Orphaned Holocaust Survivors in Western Canada”
Gary Smolyansky, York University, Class, Identity, and Ethnicity in Russian-Speaking Jewish Communities in post-WWII Canada”
2010:
Faith Jones, University of British Columbia, “‘Di ershte un greste Yidishe bukh stor‘: Miller’s Books Advertising, 1910-1920″
2009:
Tanhum Yoreh, York University, “Religious Geographies: A Case Study of Haredi Consumption Patterns in Canada and Israel”