A Reluctant Welcome for Jewish People

A Reluctant Welcome for Jewish People
Author: Pierre Anctil
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 077662797X

Noted historian Pierre Anctil takes a deep dive into editorials devoted to Jews and Judaism in Quebec’s daily Le Devoir in the first half of the twentieth century. Long one of the most discussed historiographical issues in Canadian Jewish history, these editorials are of great significance as they are representative of the reaction of the nationalist Francophone elite to the Jewish presence in Montreal, to German Nazi State anti-Semitism and to the Shoah. Pierre Anctil proposes a new reading of the editorials published in the pages of Le Devoir from 1910 to 1947—from the founding of the newspaper by Henri Bourassa until the death of its second director, Georges Pelletier. During that time, some two hundred editorials were devoted to Jews and Judaism, of which Anctil has selected sixty for inclusion in this volume. Although many of the editorials conveyed the clearly anti-Semitic views of Le Devoir’s editorialists and of Quebec society at large, a number of the editorials did express positive views of Jewish activities and accomplishments in Quebec society. Readers will find this to be an in-depth analysis and nuanced treatment of an important aspect of Canadian Jewish history. This book is published in English, translated from the original "À chacun ses juifs". - Quelle place la question juive a-t-elle occupée dans les pages du quotidien québécois Le Devoir dans la première moitié du XXe siècle? L’historien Pierre Anctil propose une analyse détaillée des éditoriaux publiés par ce journal respecté entre 1910 et 1947. La position du Devoir relativement à la communauté juive de Montréal et au judaïsme en général est l’une des questions historiographiques les plus débattues en histoire juive canadienne. En effet, les éditoriaux parus dans Le Devoir sont d’une grande signification dans la mesure où ils sont représentatifs de la réaction de l’élite francophone nationaliste à la présence juive à Montréal, à l’antisémitisme de l’État nazi allemand, et à la Shoah. Plusieurs ouvrages de langue anglaise décrivent Le Devoir comme un exemple typique de la position idéologique du Canada français des années 1930 et sa méfiance, voire son hostilité, envers les Juifs. Jusqu’à maintenant, toutefois, aucune étude sérieuse n’avait été réalisée pour appuyer ou pour réfuter ce postulat. Pierre Anctil propose une nouvelle lecture des éditoriaux du Devoir parus entre 1910 et 1947 – soit depuis la fondation du journal par Henri Bourassa jusqu’à la mort de son deuxième éditeur, Georges Pelletier. Environ 200 des éditoriaux publiés pendant cette période – soit 2 % du nombre total – portaient sur les Juifs et le judaïsme. Anctil a fait une sélection de soixante éditoriaux et les présente en version intégrale et offre un commentaire critique pour chacun. De cette collection d’éditoriaux et leur analyse émerge enfin une idée plus claire de l’antisémitisme de l’époque, à la fois dans Le Devoir et dans la société québécoise. Ce livre est publié en anglais, une traduction du titre original "À chacun ses juifs".

The Last Million

The Last Million
Author: David Nasaw
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143110993

From bestselling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII In May 1945, after German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, millions of concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators were left behind in Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers attempted to repatriate the refugees, but more than a million displaced persons remained in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to return to. Most would eventually be resettled in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages, but no nation, including the United States, was willing to accept more than a handful of the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. When in June, 1948, the United States Congress passed legislation permitting the immigration of displaced persons, visas were granted to sizable numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators, but denied to 90% of the Jewish displaced persons. A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, The Last Million tells the gripping but until now hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness and of the Last Million, as they crossed from a broken past into an unknowable future, carrying with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and shows us how it is our history as well.

FDR and the Jews

FDR and the Jews
Author: Richard Breitman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2013-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674073673

Nearly seventy-five years after World War II, a contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler's Europe. Defenders claim that FDR saved millions of potential victims by defeating Nazi Germany. Others revile him as morally indifferent and indict him for keeping America's gates closed to Jewish refugees and failing to bomb Auschwitz's gas chambers. In an extensive examination of this impassioned debate, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. In FDR and the Jews, they draw upon many new primary sources to offer an intriguing portrait of a consummate politician-compassionate but also pragmatic-struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions. For most of his presidency Roosevelt indeed did little to aid the imperiled Jews of Europe. He put domestic policy priorities ahead of helping Jews and deferred to others' fears of an anti-Semitic backlash. Yet he also acted decisively at times to rescue Jews, often withstanding contrary pressures from his advisers and the American public. Even Jewish citizens who petitioned the president could not agree on how best to aid their co-religionists abroad. Though his actions may seem inadequate in retrospect, the authors bring to light a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were far greater than those of any other world figure. His moral position was tempered by the political realities of depression and war, a conflict all too familiar to American politicians in the twenty-first century.

Ellis Island

Ellis Island
Author: Malgorzata Szejnert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781925849035

A landmark work of history that brings the voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant's experience in America. Ellis Island. How many stories does this tiny patch of land hold? How many people had joyfully embarked on a new life here -- or known the despair of being turned away? How many were held there against their will? To tell its manifold stories, Ellis Islanddraws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs and correspondence from many internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles, along with the commissioners, interpreters, doctors, and nurses who shepherded them -- all of whom knew they were taking part in a significant historical phenomenon. We see that deportations from Ellis Island were often based on pseudo-scientific ideas about race, gender, and disability. Sometimes, families were broken up, and new arrivals were held in detention at the Island for days, weeks, or months under quarantine. Indeed the island compound has spent longer as an internment camp than as a migration station. Today, the island is no less political. In popular culture, it is a romantic symbol of the generations of immigrants who reshaped the United States. But its true history reveals that today's fierce immigration debate has deep roots. Now a master storyteller brings its past to life, illustrated with unique archival photographs.

No Better Home

No Better Home
Author: David S. Koffman
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2021
Genre: Canada
ISBN: 1487523572

No Better Home? brings together a unique combination of voices to question whether or not Canada is the best home that Jews have ever had.

Faces in the Crowd

Faces in the Crowd
Author: Franklin Bialystok
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2022-06-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442604441

Starting with the first steps on Canadian soil in the eighteenth century to the present day, Faces in the Crowd introduces the reader to the people and personalities who made up the Canadian Jewish experience, from the Jewish roots of the NHL’s Ross trophy to Leonard Cohen and all the rabbis, artists, writers, and politicians in between. Drawing on a lifetime of wisdom and experience at the heart of the Canadian Jewish community, Franklin Bialystok adds new research, unique insights, and, best of all, memorable stories to the history of the Jews in Canada.

Strangers in the Land

Strangers in the Land
Author: John Higham
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2002
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780813531236

"This book attempts a general history of the anti-foreign spirit that I have defined as nativism. It tries to show how American nativism evolved its own distinctive patterns, how it has ebbed and flowed under the pressure of successive impulses in American history, how it has fared at every social level and in every section where it left a mark, and how it has passed into action. Fundamentally, this remains a study of public opinion, but I have sought to follow the movement of opinion wherever it led, relating it to political pressures, social organization, economic changes, and intellectual interests."--from the Preface, taken from back cover.

The Demons of Leonard Cohen

The Demons of Leonard Cohen
Author: Francis Mus
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0776631225

"With my jingle in your brain, Allow the Bridge to arch again" How are we to understand Leonard Cohen’s plea? Who speaks to whom in this oeuvre spanning six decades? In search of an answer to this question this study considers the different guises or “demons” that the Canadian singer-songwriter adopts. The countless roles assumed by Cohen’s personas are not some innocent game, but strategies in response to the sometimes conflicting demands of a “life in art”: they serve as masks that represent the performer’s face and state of mind in a heightened yet detached way. In and around the artistic work they are embodied by different guises and demons: image (the poser), artistry (the writer and singer), alienation (the stranger and the confidant), religion (the worshipper, prophet, and priest), and power (the powerful and powerless). Ultimately, Cohen’s artistic practice can be read as an attempt at forging interpersonal contact. The wide international circulation of Cohen’s work has resulted in a partial severing with the context of its creation. Much of it has filtered through the public image forged by the artist and his critics in concerts, interviews, and reflective texts. Less a biography than a reception study—supplemented with extensive archival research, unpublished documents, and interviews with colleagues and privileged witnesses—it sheds new light on the dynamic of a comprehensive body of work spanning a period of sixty years. Published in English.

Women in Radio

Women in Radio
Author: Geneviève A. Bonin-Labelle
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0776629077

Who are, au féminin, the legends who shaped radio in Canada? What did they contribute locally, regionally, and nationally? How was their experience in radio broadcasting different from that of their male counterparts? Women in Radio presents the women who built careers in the radio industry—yet whose contribution has often been overlooked simply because they were women. This collection of stories highlights the multi-faceted contributions they made to their field and explores issues specific to them. Academic research, interviews, personal reflections and accounts, historical reviews, and hybrid texts combine neatly in this eclectic yet well–researched edited volume to reflect the fast-paced world of radio broadcasting. Whether through storytelling, direct quotes, or quasi transcriptions best read aloud, the reader will come away with a real sense of the aural nature of radio, of the voice unaccompanied, of the pure spoken word and how it differs from the printed word. Published in English.

The Reluctant Jew

The Reluctant Jew
Author: Michael Grossman
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2007-03-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467075159

Even if you are agnostic or hard-core atheist there is a dazzling, thought-expanding, bright side to religion you may have overlooked. Living a spiritual life in the tradition of the Jewish faith, does not mean mindless adherence to outdated dogma. Judaism, instead, can be a source of exhilarating wonder, an inspiration to justice, and an impetus to ever increasing knowledge. Nowadays, even many who profess to be the most pious among us realize that when asked, What is God?, they must answer logically, even scientifically, to be persuasive. Theyre aware that any religion, to be convincing, other than to die-hard adherents, can not be at odds with reason and blindly insist only it speaks the truth. The field, therefore, is wide open. Each of us can attempt to journey towards a concept of God that makes sense, celebrates the discoveries of science, and will, hopefully, imbue the traveler with wonderment at the astonishing beauty in the world that too often lays hidden from us. Join Michael Grossman in his journey to the heart of Judaism, which places much more emphasis on "what people do" than on "what they believe," and in the process, an understanding of all the worlds great faiths.