INTRODUCTION Nearly Four Decades Have Passed

INTRODUCTION

Nearly four decades have passed since 1981, when Lester and Orpen Dennys issued The Spice Box: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Writing under its historic imprint. At the time, few such anthologies existed and The Spice Box, edited by Gerri Sinclair and Morris Wolfe, was hailed as a landmark collection.* Among other works, it included English trans- lations of Yiddish verse by J.I. Segal and Rokhl Korn, poems by A.M. Klein, Irving Layton, and Miriam Waddington, and prose by Ted Allan, Adele Wiseman, and Mordecai Richler, authors widely recognized for having brought Jewish writing to the fore in Canada. The Spice Box marked the growth of Jewish literary activity in Canada over the course of the twentieth century. It was instrumental in delineating the field of Canadian Jewish writing and soon became an important title for Lester and Orpen Dennys. In 2015, when the Anne Tannenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto launched the New Jewish Press, co-publishers Andrea Knight and Malcolm Lester invited me to edit an anthology that would pay homage to its predecessor – long out of print – and

* Both were trained as literary scholars. At the time, Sinclair taught at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Wolfe at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in Toronto. v i i i introduction bring together distinctive contemporary voices. The publishers knew of my abiding interest in Canadian Jewish writing. I had published a scholarly study of novelist Adele Wiseman’s literary career, a collection of essays focused on writing by Jewish women, as well as a two-volume critical edition of the collected poems of Miriam Waddington. They also knew that as a published poet, I mine my own Jewish inheritance when writing verse, in particular the hardships faced by my mater- nal grandparents who emigrated from Russia to Montreal in the early twentieth century. I happily accepted the invitation, agreed to follow the model es- tablished by Sinclair and Wolfe, and set about assembling a volume of Canadian Jewish writing. The New Spice Box, an aptly resonant title for the second iteration of the anthology, appeared in 2017. That collection featured contemporary writing that is reflective and open: poems by Susan Glickman, Robyn Sarah, and David Solway; stories by Gabriella Goliger, Seymour Mayne, and J.J. Steinfeld; and essays by Eva Hoff- man, Naim Kattan, and Kenneth Sherman. These writers look back on the past and read it anew; they also partake fully of the present moment in Canada and cast outward to the future. In 2018, the University of Toronto Press acquired The New Jewish Press, giving the imprint a new authority and a wider reach. As one of the first titles to be issued under the rebranded imprint, this anthology, the third in The Spice Box series, widens its lens to include Jewish authors who write across borders, claim new identities, and join ritual practices with secular beliefs. The titular spice box remains a fitting metaphor for this project. Used during Havdalah, a religious ceremony marking the symbolic end of the Sabbath and the start of the new week, the spice box contains an aromatic blend of spices: cardamom, cinnamon, and clove, myrtle and nutmeg. Havdalah requires that the decorative box be handed around so everyone in attendance can smell the spices. In the same way that the spice blend elicits a sensual response from congregants, so too will the evocative and exciting material gathered here engage readers. introduction i x

The driving force behind The New Spice Box: Contemporary Jewish Writing was the desire to uncover the twin touchstones of original expression and writerly craft, and to balance the representation of genres, styles, and authorial perspectives. In selecting material for this volume, I was guided first by its title, with its emphasis on newness. The New Spice Box showcases recent work written in English that is fresh and relevant, profound and lasting – problematic as it may be to assign such literary merit. Although it reproduces extracts from several works of creative non-fiction, it omits excerpts from novels, since I do not be- lieve excerpts best represent a novelist’s work. The date of first journal or book publication always follows each selection. Across this anthology, all writers identify as Jewish – no matter where they were born or raised, have lived or travelled – through cultural and/or religious affiliation. In their work, they address Jew- ish subjects – some do so more obliquely than others – by treating historical events, probing their cultural heritage, scrutinizing gender roles and sexuality, observing or critiquing religious custom. Sever- al return to Europe and the subject of the Holocaust. Many others reach beyond that past and write as North Americans who grapple with a complex, ever-evolving sense of self. All acknowledge the un- shakable influence of memory, both communal and individual, on Jewish identity. Since all literature of the Jewish diaspora – that of Canada and the United States, Britain and Australia, as well as the former Soviet-led countries – emerged from the disruptive experiences of exile, immigration, and settlement, it is understandable that contemporary Jewish writers are especially attuned to global shifts that continue to affect de- mographics and politics, cultures and economies. In the pages that follow, readers will find original and varied responses to the intersectional complexities of cultural and national identity that ground this project. They will see that there are innumerable ways in which literature is Jewish in orientation, multiple ways in which writers identify as Jewish, and countless ways in which Jewish experience is written into literature. x introduction

Subject matter and literary perspective, style and setting range widely to reflect the variation and ingenuity that have come to char- acterize contemporary Jewish writing. Individual pieces, for example, conjure the private thoughts of the biblical Isaac at the moment of near sacrifice by his father Abraham, consider the symbolic meaning of the brit milah or circumcision for a newborn male, recall the foul taste of a mistakenly eaten etrog during Sukkot, and reimagine a mother dying of cancer “in reverse.” Narrators include a witness at the trial of former SS officer Oskar Groening, a daughter abandoned by her mother, a former stutterer, and the son of a bookie. Stylistically, the writing is mixed: comic and tragic, realistic and imagistic, expressionistic and surre- al. Short stories are set in Ontario, Quebec, and California, France, Germany, and Poland. In an attempt to stay true to its eclecticism and divergent moral attitudes, poetry, short stories, and creative non- fiction appear together under the thematic groupings of voice, place, and practice that structure this collection. Although each piece in this anthology appears in English, at times the language is inflected by the lilt and syntax of Yiddish. The effect is to summons a formative Eastern European past that either will not or cannot be relinquished despite countless border crossings, both real and imagined. At the same time, Jewish identity becomes visceral and corporeal through the expressive and embodied use of the English language. Thus, part one, “Voice,” refers broadly to the artistic fore- grounding of language and idiom to establish identity. Enter graphic memoirist Bernice Eisenstein, for whom Yiddish is her mamaloshen or mother tongue. Though it carries the weight of the ancestral past into the present, Yiddish is also “the soul and substance” of family life in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood, which as a toddler Eisenstein experienced as a “veltele, a world within a world.” The dominance of Yiddish adds to Eisenstein’s sense of living in a world circumscribed as much by language as geography. Consequently, language becomes her true home and serves as an invaluable bridge, si- multaneously reaching back in time and forward to the present. introduction x i

Poet Isa Milman also hears Yiddish first as the language of her “cra- dlesongs” and later as the “breath” of her “parents’ loss” in the Holo- caust. A “tremble-throated song” and “remnant of the ember-world,” the sounds of Yiddish awaken nostalgia for Milman’s North American childhood, as well as an Eastern European past she knows only through her parents. In part two, “place” is used conceptually and acquires multiple meanings. Literally, place denotes geography. Adapting to the environ- ment of North America can confer a sense of continuity and stability through connection with the past, appreciation for the present, and belief in the future. Lack of adjustment, however, may lead to a height- ened sense of disruption and isolation. Figuratively, place also refers variously to historical crises and cultural memory, to the lived experience of immigration and settlement, to persistent feelings of exile and marginalization. In “Arise, Ye Wretched of the Earth,” essayist David Rakoff recalls his fifteen-year-old self coming of age during a summer spent work- ing on a kibbutz. The demands of physical labour and life in the new country of Israel bring a new awareness to the adolescent raised in the comfort of Toronto. Apprehension also comes in Mireille Silcoff’s short story Shalom“ Israel!” which invokes several phases of immigration as it moves from Russia to Tel Aviv, then on to a number of American cities en route to Miami, and finally to Montreal. In doing so, it unveils the historical and cultural layers – as well as the personal losses – that tie the narrator to her mother, who is a guest in the daughter’s Montreal home. Root- ed in events of the past but grounded in the present, the story unites daughter and mother through their separate experiences of anguish and shared knowledge of grief. Mark Berman is the thirteen-year-old Latvian-born protagonist of David Bezmozgis’s short story “An Animal to the Memory.” For Mark, Jewishness is an imposed sensibility, linked inextricably to distress that is more personal than communal. In Latvia, where he spent the first six x i i introduction years of his life, Mark’s family members were forced by law to conceal their Jewish identity. He therefore arrives in Canada with little if any sense of his ancestry. Mark’s inculcation into Canadian Jewish culture is through violence, verbal abuse, and emotional trauma. First, in the north end Toronto suburb where he and his parents settle, he is “pummeled” by former friends of similar Soviet background, seemingly in response to the incongruous “white tuxedo” he wears in the bar mitzvah portrait hanging in his home. Second, at Hebrew school he is humiliated by Canadian-born boys who insult his homemade lunches of “smoked Hungarian salami, Polish bologna, [and] roast turkey” that violate ko- sher dietary laws, and is further provoked into fist fights by relentless bullying. Finally, and most significantly, Mark is traumatized by Gur- vich, the school principal who dishonours the sanctity of Holocaust commemoration by inflicting his particular view of suffering on his vul- nerable charge. In the end, Mark is brought to a shattering realization of what it means “to be a Jew.” The works included in part three, “Practice,” emphasize ritual and/or tradition. At the core of this section is prayer, expressed through thought and emotion as much as ceremony. Here, Passover, which commemorates the biblical passage to freedom, is observed as a holiday that continues to give structure and meaning to Jewish life, while Sukkot, a joyous holiday that celebrates the harvest, is si- multaneously tinged with sadness. A wedding gives rise to emotional release, manifest as the ecstatic and frenzied dancing of male guests. Several poems educe the pain of losing a loved one and the comfort that comes from observing the rituals of lamentation, less through the Mourner’s Kaddish (or prayer) and shiva (the seven-day mourn- ing period following the death of an immediate family member) than the redemptive power of verse. In several instances, poems serve as secular prayers. In an excerpt from Between Gods, the compelling account of Ali- son Pick’s quest to reconstitute her religious and cultural identities, introduction x i i i

history is reclaimed through discovery that is equal parts wrench- ing and redemptive. As a teenager, Pick, who was raised Anglican in Kitchener, Ontario, learns the truth of her father’s Czech Jewish ori- gin. In adulthood, she embarks on a personal journey to uncover her father’s suppressed history, which leads her to the shocking revelation that European relatives were lost during the Holocaust and the even- tual decision – even as she declares “I already am [Jewish]” – to under- go formal conversion to Judaism. For Pick, Jewish memory arises as embodied knowledge that she must first “excavate,” then recover, and finally reclaim. Her memoir recounts the elaborate process of coming to terms with her hidden family trauma while “graft[ing]” herself onto Judaism. Of all the writers represented in The New Spice Box, none more than Pick shows that Jewish consciousness can be acquired, as well as inher- ited. Although her Jewish patrimony lay secreted in the inconsisten- cies and gaps in her family narrative and interrelationships, it called out to her for exploration. That she willingly engaged in the disquiet- ing task of retrieval – research that led her to review her most intimate bonds, past and present – suggests the degree to which Jewish identity is at once painful and lasting, resilient and sustaining. For Pick, the turn to Judaism, its history, rituals, and sense of community, was a true homecoming. In the closing essay, suitably titled “Wor(l)d Salad,” Sigal Samuel revels in the knowledge that “Jewish tradition is obsessed with language. It loves to language; it takes pleasure in languaging.” Samuel’s “own internal music” is the Hebrew language. It structures experience and gives “syntax” to her feelings, as well as her dreams. Samuel ven- erates Hebrew as her mother’s first language, her own mother tongue, and the language of modern Israel, but especially as a “magical” historical language that contains “the seed of all languages.” As readers will undoubtedly note, many pieces traverse the classifi- cations of voice, place, and practice that shape this anthology. In fact, the headings are intended as readerly guides through this gathering of x i v introduction poetry, short stories, and essays by writers who probe the multifaceted complexities of contemporary Jewish identity. If there is one thing the assembled authors share, however, it is their sense of comfort in writing openly about Jewish experience. This is no small freedom, sought over centuries and finally held as a right.

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I extend thanks to Andrea Knight and Malcolm Lester for spearhead- ing the New Jewish Press, and to Natalie Fingerhut and Lynn Fisher of the University of Toronto Press for supporting The New Spice Box. I am also indebted to Shannon Martin and Kathryn Stagg for their invaluable research assistance.