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Maria N. Rachwal is a musicologist and music teacher from Toronto, ON. Her work on women in classical music has been featured on the CBC Radio, as well as media throughout North America. Her book, “From Kitchen to Carnegie Hall: Ethel Stark and the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra,” was shortlisted for a Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature.

Ethel Stark changed the face of classical music forever by forming the first full all-women’s symphony orchestra and including the first Black female musician. The article in the Canadian Jewish Studies Journal titled “‘A Jewish Maestra and a Lady too’: Reflections on Femininity in the Career of Ethel Stark” highlights how this Austro-Canadian Jewish woman who lived outside the constraints of conventional domesticity, both navigated through and defied the ideals of the “Cult of True Womanhood”, to spearhead a movement of feminism in music. Read this article and more on the CJS Journal by clicking here: (https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/index)

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The Rosenberg Award Committee of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is now inviting members of our Association to submit nominations for the 2020 Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award.

Submissions should be accompanied by a statement outlining the individual’s or the institution’s background and justifying the suggestion. Since 2001, the award has been presented annually by the ACJS to an individual, group or institution that has made significant contributions to Canadian Jewish Studies in one or more fields. The deadline is March 15, 2020. If an appropriate recipient is identified, the award will be presented at our next annual meeting in Ottawa, Ontario on May 24-26, 2020.
 
 Please send your nominations to the chair of the award committee, Barry Stiefel, bstiefel@yahoo.com.

Le comité du Prix Rosenberg de l’Association d’études juives canadiennes invite maintenant les membres de notre association à soumettre des candidatures pour le prix Louis Rosenberg 2020. Il s’agit d’un prix remis pour souligner l’excellence dans le domaine des études juives canadiennes.

Les propositions doivent être accompagnées d’une déclaration décrivantla personne ou la vocation de l’institution et qui justifie la candidature. Depuis 2001, leprix a été décerné chaque année par l’Aéjc à un individu, un groupe ou une institution qui a apporté une importante contribution aux études juives canadiennes dans un ou plusieurs champs. La date limite est le 15 Mars 2020. Si un candidat approprié est identifié, le prix sera remis lors de notre prochaineassemblée annuelle à Ottawa, en Ontario, le 24-26 Mai 2020.
 
 S’il vous plaît envoyer voscandidatures au président du comité de sélection, Barry Stiefel, bstiefel@yahoo.com.

Canadian Jewish Studies is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience. The Jounral publishes research in English and French in the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, economics, geography, demography, education, religion, linguistics, literature architecture, performing arts, and fine arts, among others. Published since 1993, the electronic version of the journal is free and accessible at https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs .

Print copies are available to members of the Association or by special order.

To learn more about membership in the organization, please visit our website: http://acjs-aejc.ca/.

To learn more about contributing to the journal, or to read issues of the journal, please visit the journal’s website: https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs.

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has just eliminated its entire library staff, citing financial constraints. This article in the Forward by Aiden Pink provides more information:  https://forward.com/news/national/438538/yivo-yiddish-library/ 

Concerned parties are asked to read and sign a letter to the YIVO Board calling for “the immediate reinstatement of the library staff, and for more financial transparency, and accountability, to the scholarly community that carries on this work”.

Here is a link to the letter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1It_zJlvk2yoGCqRi7UBR8Rei_IEv6Q5X4qWAWL039Mo/edit?fbclid=IwAR2J59SWBAMnQFjrJi4k3lxJcLQNvzy-mnlCqig49pWmCGvSE6nuJuG_6nE

Note that at the top is a link to a brief form to fill out to add your signature. 

Have you read Irish Questions and Jewish Questions by Aidan Beatty and Dan O’Brien? An absorbing read of a collection of essays exploring the parallels of the histories of Jewish and Irish identities. The Irish and the Jews are both peoples whose history is filled with strife and hardship. The book explores how similar struggles were faced by the people of the Emerald Isle and the people of the Torah, and how their cultural identity was shaped by these travails and their answers to them.

I am writing to update you on some exciting changes we’re making to our scholarly journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. The editorial team has been hard at work transitioning the journal from an annual to a biannual online publication, improving the journal’s webpage, and extending its visibility by making it more findable on several additional high-traffic academic search engines. As voted upon at our AGM last spring, to accomplish this most effectively and to best manage the journal’s limited budget, we will move to a default-online model for journal dissemination. Each calendar year will see the publication of one Archives Matter sub-section, and one Translation sub-section. Articles and Book Reviews will continue to appear in every volume.

Print copies, which will contain two-issues in one binding at the end of every calendar year, will be available for purchase by institutions and readers wishing to have hard copies. ACJS members who wish to order the bound volume will be able to do so for $28, (i.e. $14 for each issue in a given calendar year), at the time they renew their annual membership. 

If you wish to order a print copy of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes (containing two-issues in one binding), please visit the Journal page on the ACJS website here.

Jody Spiegel is Director of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program at the Azrieli Foundation. After Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and a brief career in litigation, Jody joined the Azrieli Foundation at its inception in 2005. Jody has managed the publication and dissemination of 110 Holocaust survivor stories and oversees a team that organizes academic conferences to support scholarly discussion of Holocaust testimony and works with teachers across Canada to help them integrate survivor testimony into their curriculum.

Across Canada and internationally, Jody is a frequent guest speaker and panelist on the role of storytelling, memory and on the future of Holocaust education. Most recently she was a featured panelist in Texas at SXSW2018 SouthBySouthWest conference on Experiential Storytelling and at Yad Vashem’s International Conference for Holocaust Education. She sits on the Education Working Group as part of the Canadian delegation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. 

Jody co-authored the introduction essay to the “1944”: https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/view/40096

The foreword From Fragment to Whole, written by Arielle Berger and Jody Spiegel, provides the background to how Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung’s 1944 Yiddish manuscript came to the Azrieli Foundation’s publishing program and was given a new life and audience through its transformation into the new 2016 edition, The Vale of Tears.

Arielle Berger is the Managing Editor of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program at the Azrieli Foundation, where she has worked since 2010. She has managed the publication of more than 40 memoirs, including the foundation’s first anthology, an award-winning volume focusing on women’s survival during the Holocaust. Arielle has spoken about editing survivor memoirs and the future of Holocaust testimonies at a variety of events.

You can find the foreword here.

The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada invites applications for the 2020 Switzer-Cooperstock Prize in Western Canadian Jewish History.  This prize, established by the Switzer family to honour parents and grandparents, will be awarded for a publishable essay on Jewish history in Western Canada with some preference for essays on secular Jewish schools in Western Canada, Jewish settlers, farmers,  and traders in rural areas of Western Canada, and the immigration experience of Jews to Western Canada. Preference will be given to research specific to the Jewish experience in the urban centers and rural communities of the Canadian Prairie Provinces.

To apply or request further information, contact Mr. Stanislao Carbone, Director of Programs and Exhibits, Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada; 123 Doncaster Street; Winnipeg Canada , R3N 2B2. Email: scarbone@jhcwc.org.

The Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies presents its Fall 2019 Programs:

September 16:  Professor Sarah Imhoff (Indiana University) spoke on  ” The ‘Crippled ‘ Zionist: Jessie Sampter, Religion, and Disability.” Co-sponsored with the Journal of Religion and Culture.

September 18:  Professor Samuel Kassow (Trinity College) presented the film “Who Will Write Our History” based on his book.  Co-sponsored with the Jewish Public Library and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center.

September 19: Professor Samuel Kassow (Trinity College) spoke on “Reportage in the Ghettos:

the writings of Peretz Opoczynski and Joseph Zelkowicz.” Co-sponsored with the Jewish Public Library and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center.

October 30: Conference on “Judaism and Gender” Co-sponsored with the Jewish Law Association and the Judaic Studies Program of the Department of Religions and Cultures.

October 31: The 2019 Joseph A. Kagedan-Kage Memorial Lecture: Professor Pierre Anctil of the University of Ottawa will speak on “Exploring the Complexity of Anti-Judaism in French Canadian Catholicism: the case of L’Action catholique newspaper (1931-1939)”

November 14: Le lancement du livre Les Juifs hassidiques de Montréal  en présence des deux directeurs de la publication, Pierre Anctil et Ira Robinson.  Avec le Réseau des études Québécoises à l’université Concordia (RÉQUC).

November 26: A public reading by writer George Ferenczi of his novel in progress, “Circus.”

For further information on the Institute:

email: cjs@alcor.concordia.ca; telephone: 514-848-2424, x2074; 

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CUcdnJewishStudies/

website: http://www.concordia.ca/artsci/research/jewish-studies.html