A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO OUR MANY JEWISH FRIENDS AND PATRONS
(luilding & folley Ltd.
AUCilONEERJS 521 West Pender Street
PAcific 3720
Mttmtml S^ttmaB
Will Be Held At
m\M nmmi mmmx
(East Marine Drive)
SUNDAY, SEPT. 29th. AT 3:00 P.M.
Prayers will be offered for the following who have passed away during the past year:
LEOPOLD JOSEPH MAHRER Oct. 18, 1945
MORRIS PILOVSKY....................Nov. 8, 1945
MRS. A. GROSSMAN................Nov. 15, 1945
SARAH RIVA YOCHLOWTTZ Nov. 17,1945
BESSIE KOVISH................... ... Nov. 18, 1945
MINNIE GOLDSTEP ............_... Nov. 21,1945
MAX RUSH...................................Dec. 4, 1945
S. RUBIN......................................... Dec. 12,1945
M. D. SIMON....................................Dec. 28,1945
MOLLY COHEN..........................Dec. 25,1945
MOSES PETER CHECHIK........Jan, 20,1946
ABRAM GOSMAN........................Jan. 26,1946
LOUIS LEDS RINGEL...................Feb. 5,1946
NATHAN TASKER.....................Feb. 15,1946
BERNARD FRANK....................., Feb. 20, 1946
ABRAHAM W. LIPSIN................Feb. 23,1946
HARRY BRAVERMAN ........_ .. Mar. 5, 1946
LOUIS FREEMAN.................-.. Mar. 6, 1946
JANE SOLOMON........................Mar. 11, 1946
SAMUEL T. COHEN.................Mar. 28, 1946
MORRIS UPSON......................... June 4, 1946
ALEXANDER WEISS............... Aug. 12, 1946
H. I. MALLEK................................Aug 19,1946
ANNE NEME^Z............................Aug. 24,1946
ALEX BARRETT........................ Sept. 4 ,1946
SOLOMON VANDT..................... July 29,1946
HELEN SISSON.........................JSept. 14, 1946
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A BUS WILL LEAVE THE SCHARA TZEDECK SYNAGOGUE, HEATLEY AND PENDER AT 2 P.M. THOSE WHO HAVE NO OTHER MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION WILL BE CONVEYED TO THE SERVICES WITHOUT CHARGE.
Vilna
m
By Alfred Werner
Canad
a
Liast summer. Dr. Werner, European Journalist and writer, undertook a lengthy, tour through the leading cities of the Dominion of Canada to study the land and the people. In this article he describes the most outstanding oenteir of Jewish leamin,? at Montreal.
"You've got to see our Jewish Public Library, for there is nothing similar to that instituti<Hi on the entire North American continent!" Thus I was told Canadian friends when I visited the city of Montreal last summer. Another Jewish Library—so -w^hat!, I said to myself somewhat skeptically. I had seen some of the most famous Jewish latook collections in ithe Old World, and of course, such treasures of accumulated Jewish wisdom as the great Jewish and Semitic libraries at New York, Philadelphia, Wai^hington, Cincinnati and Chicago. As late as 1900 the Jewish population of Montreal had comprised only about 7,000 souls, and although it had multiplied iby; ten, in the past four decades, it was difficult to imagine how such a relatively yoimg and comparatively small kehilla could have ibuilt anything well worth seeing.
Yet my visit to the distinguished-looking old two-story bmlding on 4.099 Esplanade Avenue, situated in the heart of the metropolis Jewish quarter tm-ned out to be highly satisfactory. The building faces the majestic Mount Royal, one of the goals of the many visitors from abroad, and has been serving as the home of the J.PJI1., as we shall call it for brevity's sake, for the past sixteen years. If you plan to visit Montreal next summer, and I ican warmly recommend any trip to the beautiful land of our north-em neighbors—you'd better inquire about the J.P.L,'s new address, ior by that time it may have been removed to another building, the construction of which is now in the process of planning.
The J.P.L, was founded in the spring of 1914, only a few weeks before in far Sarajevo a Serb student assassinated the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and thus precipitated the first World War. The man who brought the institution into being was no less a Hebrew critic and writer than that great educator of his people, Reuben Brainin. Kavhig arrived in Montreal in 1912, at the age of fifty, he launched, with youthful enthusiasm, his activities as editor-in-chief of the Canader Adler (Canadian Eagle,) the Jewish daily, endeavoring to develop a Jewish cultural life among the iciiy's 30,000 Jews..In the coliunns of his paper he vigorously campaigned for the
establishment of a Jewish library, and he was greatly aided by a young Art's student at IVrGill University, Jehuda Kaufmann, who is now an outstanding Hebrew scholar and author in Palestine. '
The J.P.L. started in a little brick building on St. Urbain street, with about 400 volumes, the gift of private donors. Today, it has far more than 20,000 volumes; While this number is small compiared with such huge collections as those of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem or New York Jewish Seminary, it must be bom in mind that such renowned collections as the library of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Paris, the library of the Jewish Theological seminary in Breslau or the Montezenas library of the Ets-Haim theological seminary in Amsterdam have (or rather had) not many more books than Montreal's J.P.L. either. In a sense the J.P.L. reminds us of the erstwhile Library of the Yivo in Vilna—it was completely destroyed by the Nazis—insofar as here, too, the majority of books are in Yiddish.
The staff consists of trained librarians, I was shown aroimd the bviilding toy the well-known Y'id-dish poet, Melach Ravitdi, now Executive Director of the "Folks Universitat," an institution connected with the J.P.L. about which I shall write later on. Before explaining to me the present set-up of both Library and "Univesitat," Mr. Ravitch showed me some of the treasures of the place, including rare first editions of Hebrew works dating back to the 16th and 17th centiu-ies.
Passing by the portraits of famous Hebrew and Yiddish writers, such as Bialik, Mendele Mocher Seforim, Perez and Sholom Alei-chem, we decended to a fireproof vault that contains the archives. One of the special treasures is a "Kopierbuch," containing caiibon copies of about 180 letters by Theodore Herzl, dictated to his secretary, in long hand and personally signed by the author of the Jud-enstaat.
The book is particularly valuable since many of the ori^al letters were lost—we know their contents only through the carbon copies kept at the J.P.L, at Montreal. The addresses are Zionists in aU parts of the world, in Karlsbad, Ferrara, Odessa, Smyrna, Montreal, Berlin, Johannesburg and many other cities. The first letter is dated: September 24, 1903, the last: February 29, 1904 (Herzl died albout two months later.) In that period— foUowirig the rejection of England's offer of Uganda by the Sixth Zionist Congress—Herzl vain-Continued on Page 44)
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JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN