Thursday, August 3,1989 — THE BULLETIN — 5
By ADAM FUERSTENBERG
Second of a Series
The first'"Yiddish" immigrants, those from Central and Eastern Europe, began to trickle into Canada in the 1860s, but the trickle becomes a stream and later a wave after 1881 when, as a result of state-sanctioned pogroms and intolerable legal i"estric-tions under the Tzarist regime, tens of thousands escape and try to make a new life for themselves in North America.
In 1850 there vyere fewer than 500 Jews in the colonies which became Canada; by 1900 there were almost 17,000 and suddenly there was a reading public already accustomed to popular Yiddish writers, to Yiddish theatre, and to Yiddish newspapers. By 1930 the community had grown tenfold, to over 165,000, of whom 95.4 percent reported Yiddish as their mother tongue, in that year's national census.
The next decade and a half (from 1930 to the end of World War II) — a decade full of economic hardship at home and agitation over the Jewislr^rag^^y^in Europe — was paradoxically the high crest of |i^^ish^^u^^^
period during which m|jo1^ cibmmuriiai m established earlier, came to full maturity while stiiremplby^^ as the
main vehicle for reaching the Jewish masses.
For another decade or so after the war, this period of extensive use of Yiddish was bolstered by the influx of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust Survivors, among them not a few talented, creative and already established Yiddish writers. But in retrospect this was a temporary rejuvenation. It was produced by sheer numbers: some 120,000 Jewish immigrants have arrived since the war, most of them speaking Yiddish, even the many of the recently arrived Russians.
However, the children of Survivors have largely joined the already existing current of cultural, economic, and social assimilation into Canadian society which had already begun in the 1940s for the first and second generation descendants of the earlier waves of immigration. The 1971 census revealed that only-22 percent of those, whose mother tongue was Yiddish (in other words, including the now elderly who had come before World War. 11),still continued to speak Yiddish, most often at home.
Obviously even many of the Survivors had switched to English. As a consequence, although it is happening a full generation later, ihan in, the U.S., the major institutions of Yiddish quiture in Canada have been pass^^
the pioneers who established them and through their success, as vehicles for acculturation, ironically paved the way for a community, which expresses its vigor and cohesiveness in English.
First to disappear were the local and the imported professional and amateur manifestations of Yiddish mass entertainment and Yiddish theatre. The occasional productions mounted by the indefatigable Dora Wasserman, or visits by entertainment figures from the enfeebled Yiddish theatre scene in New York or Miami Beach, make it hard to believe that Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal had competing groups which justified building — actually building — a 1,500 seat theatre (raised through the sale of shares to the public) in Toronto in 1921.
This was the Standard theatre, ''the finest Yiddish playhouse in North America and probably the world," diS one contemporary unabashedly claimed.
But as early as 1914 Montreal had flourishing vaudeville houses, the best known being the Hazomir (after the Lodz musical and singing society) under direction of Kanader Adler journalist B.I. Goldstein.
More than two decades later the legendary Chayele Grober was able to establish the successful Yiddish Teater Geselshaft (known as Yteg), which competed with the Arheiter Teater
"Israel seeks to take over West Bank farms. To this end It Is disrupting the traditional
Arab farming methods."
There is no question that Israeli farming techniques have changed farming methods. In fact, the primitive, pre-1967 methods have been revolutionized. As a world leader in modern agriculture, Israel has brought new farming methods to Arab farmers through Its agricultural extension service. Israel has helped Introduce West Bank farmers to new irrigation methods, high-yield strains and high-income crops.
For example, in 1968 there were 120 tractors in the West Bank. By 1986, the number had grown to over 3,700. Overall, the proportion of the territories' work force engaged in agriculture dropped from 45% in 1967 to 24.4% in 1985.
Agricultural produce Increased at an annual rate of about 10%, continuing into the late 1980's after dipping In 1985 and 1986.
Reprinted irom Myths and Facts, a publication of Near East Research, Inc. Complete copies of Myths and Facts are available for U.S. $3.95 from Near East Report, 500 North Capitol street, N.W., Washington, D.C.20001.
Adam Fuerstenberg has been professor of English at RyersonPoiytechnical Institute in Toronto since X964. He is an authority on Canadian Yiddish Literature and on Canadian Jewish writers. A Short History of Yiddish in Canada is a series adapted from Prof. Adam Fuersten-berg's forthcoming book on Yiddish writers in Canada. The articles were first published in Voice of Radom.
Geselshaft, sponsored by the leftists, and the Teater Lige. an offshoot of the Poalei-Zion movement. These theatre groups not only provided entertainment and the great classics like The Dybuk and Mirele Efros, or the musicals of Goldfadden, but they also provided a dramatic outlet for local concerns, such as Abraham Rhinewine's The Assimilator, staged in Toronto, or the one-acters of Yehezkel Braunstein in Winnipeg.
Next to biegin vanishing were Jewish trade union branches, especially in the fur and garment industry, as their Yiddish-speaking membership died or retired and were replaced by more recent immigrant groups. These are being followed by the landsmanshaften. which played such an important role in easing the hardships of the new immigrants through social and cultural activities, as well as free-loan associations and credit unions.
The surviving ones are now mainly concerned with fundrais-ing for Israel, more often as not conducted in English to accommodate younger members. A notable exception are the Radomers, who have their own synagogue in Toronto — like the Lodzer and Kieltzer landsmanshaften — and still publish (after 29 years) a very respectable bilingual, bi-monthly journal (Yiddish and English) with a world-wide circulation of about 1,500 copies.
Most significant, however, is the accelerating demise of Yiddish newspapers and periodicals in the last 20 years, and a significant shift to Jewish Day Schools, stressing exclusively Hebrew. At various times over the past 75 years, Canada could boast of almost 40 periodicals ranging from popular dailies, like Montreal's Kanader Adler, to respectable in-house organs like the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society's Neiland, appearing for six issues in 1926-27, to the humourous Kanader Mazik, appearing in Winnipeg, or J.J. Segal's short-lived Nuancen and Roierd in the 1920's and Gershon Pomerantz's r/wr Un Feder in the 1950's, which were on the highest literary level.
Winnipeg, sometimes called the Vilna of Canada, with a Jewish population which never exceeded 20,000, had some nine publications in Yiddish at various times, including for many, years Dos Yiddishe Vort, a daily. Now, with the Jewish population reduced by almost a quarter, due to deteriorating economic conditions in the province and a net exodus of young people to more prosperous parts of Canada, it has had to close its famous I.L. Peretz school— the school which had as its teachers men like Abraham Golomb and FalekZolf.
There would be some Yiddish taught, when the school amal-gamatd with the Talmud Torah, but clearly it became secondary to Hebrew.
Ironically, this is happening at a time when there is a significant revival of interest in Yiddish among the young, some of whom haVe it available at least partially at Canada's two major universities. University of Toronto and McGill. Moreover, the political clirtiate in Quebec-has vastly increased attendance in the Jewish Day Schools and the Yiddish schools have benefited proportionally.
■ HOUDAY ISSUE
Sfcond CUn KUil CNe. 02101in MontiMl
Friday. April 10.1987. Vol 80. No. 10
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KANADER ADLER (7/ie Jewish Eagle), once popular Yiddish daily founded in 1907 in IMontreal ~ note Frencli name on masthead, L'Algle Julf. This "front" page (from right to left) was published April 10,1987, Erev Passover.
Even in Toronto, the Biafik school — the only "Yiddish" day school — is constantly adding grades and will likely soon establish a junior high school, that is a level up to grade nine, while other schools are providing afteirnoon and Sunday instruction in Yiddish.
The Montreal Jewish schools are especially fortunate since they are heavily subsidized by provincial government grants which in 1976-77 totalled six million dollars. The result is that in a community of about 100,000, almost 7,000 children, from nursery to high school, attend Jewish Day Schools. Toronto's Jewish schools, even without government help, show a similar level of growth.
Eliahu Bergman noted in a recent article in Midstream that there is a direct link between Jewish identity and Jewish education, that "the more education, the more likely a continuing Jewish identity."
The continuing vitality of the Yiddish schools in major Cana-'diah Jewish centres suggests that many young parents, either Survivors' children or themselves graduates of the Yiddish schools, want Yiddish to be a part of their children's Jewish identity. - '
(To be continued)
Should Jews mourn still on Tisha B'Av?
By DVORA WAYSMAN
Do Jews mourn even when it's no longer necessary? Should we still weep for the destruction of the First and Second Temples even though Jerusalem is again the capital of the State of Israel and Jews from all over the world have been free for 22 years to come and pray at the Western Wall?
The Talmud states that on the ninth of Av one is obliged to observe all mourning rites which apply in the case of the death of a next of kin. This date commsiimorates many tragedies, but the main focus of the mourning is for the destruction of the Temple.
The First Temple was destroyed on Av9 by Nebuchadnez/er in 586 BCE marking the beginning of Jewish exile. The Second Temple was destroyed on the same date by Titus in 70 C.E.
Other shocking calamities also occurred on Av 9 — in 135 C. E. the fortress of Betar fell and Bar Kochba and his men were massacred; and Jerusalem was ploughed up by the tyrant Hadrian. On the same cursed day in 1290, King Edward 1 signed an edict expelling Jews from England and on Av9 in 1492, following the terrible Inquisition. 300,000 Jews, led by the statesman and sage Don Isaac Abarbanel, began to leave Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella had signed the decree for their expulsion.
It is explicitly stated in the Talmud: "He who eats and drinks on 9th Av will not live to see the crowning of Jerusalem, for the Scriptures state: 'Rejoice ye with Jerusalem and be glad for joy with her, ye that mourn her.' This somewhat,puzzling sentence means that the value of mourning lies not only in remembering the past and applying its lessons to the present, but also in recognizing the unity of our people, the roots of its existence and the prophetic destiny still awaiting fulfilment with the coming of the Messiah.
Tisha B'Av is symbolized by mourning, fasting and readings of dirges from the Hook of Lamentations. The ruined city of Jerusalem is personfied as "the daughter of Zion" bemoaning her fate. She weeps al night and receives no comfort. Het* friends and lovers have betrayed her and she is exhorted to "let tears run down like a river day and ni^ht."
loihe Kabbalisis(the.lewish mystics) the ninth of Av repres-cnlcd the nature of the world's incompleteness and the great need lor the return of the Holy Presence to Jerusalem with the rebuilding of the I eniplc. The Midrash (l.ani. Rah. I) contains the sign i Ilea nt slatemem that "The Messiah, the Savior, was born on the day the Icmpic was destroyed."
I isha B'Av ivobserved in Israel, as it is the world over, with
the fast beginning at sundown. AV-A^r/z (Book ofLa/nentationsJis read in the synagogue in the evening by the dim light of candles with the congregation sitting on the floor or on low stools; and it is again read in the morning.
It was written by the prophet Jeremiah who witnessed the destruction of the First Temple. Then A.7m>/ are read — a collection of dirges by Jewish poets of different ages. In Jerusalem on this day, hundreds of thousands flock to the Western Wall, last remnant of the Great Temple, where they sit on the ground and pray, often all through the night.
Many Jews believe that the birth of Modern Israel negates the need to mourn for'the fall of Zion, whereas others see Tisha B'Av as a symboLfor all the persecutions of our people and our sufferings in exile. In Judaism, however, despair is always tempered by hope so that we conclude the Tisha B'Av reading with the words: "Turn us unto Thee O L-rd, that we may be turned. Renew our days as of old."
Jerusalem-based writer/author/poet Dvora Waysman continues to contribute insights into the cycle of the Jewish year.
WZPS
How doth the city sit solitary, That was lull 61 people,
How Is she become as a widow! (Lamentations 1:1)