CONTEMPORARY JEWISH WRITING IN CANADA: AN ANTHOLOGY
Edited by Michael Greenstein, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2004.
Reviewed by Dvoira Yanovsky

Anthologies are an exciting way to discover new
authors, enjoy old favourites, and experiment
with different genres. They satisfy the cravings
of their target audience while seeking to broaden
that audience. Contemporary Jewish Writing in
Canada: An Anthology (part of the series Jewish
Writing in the Contemporary World ) on the
surface appears directed at an academic rather
than popular audience. This is unfortunate, since
this intriguing collection is in danger of being
swallowed up by literary pretentiousness.
Contemporary Jewish Writing begins with the
obligatory introduction by the editor, Michael
Greenstein. His passion for the subject fills a
numbing thirty-eight pages (longer by far than
any of the selections). His theme, more or less,
is that A.M. Klein, "the father of
Canadian-Jewish literature," is the mighty river
from which the streams of contemporary Jewish
writing flow. Oh my. Greenstein's potentially
interesting ideas are buried under a mound of
incomprehensible academic prose. For example,
consider this: "Caught between the extremes of
American mobility and English conservative
rootedness, Canadian-Jewish literature charts a
middle course between the ironic and the iconic,
wandering and fixity, so that the margin becomes
an all-encompassing centre." English please! Now,
with a bit of effort, I'm sure we could come to
decipher this sentence, but who has the time or
the inclination?
Truthfully, after the first eight pages I
couldn't stand it any longer and skimmed the
remaining thirty. Suffice to say, unless your
professor (or compulsive nature) compels you to
do so, skip the introduction. Nothing will be
lost and much time will be saved.
The good news is, your time will not be wasted
reading the actual selections. Seventeen writers
are represented, including both Canadian-born and
transplants coming from Poland, Iraq, Austria,
France, Hungary, Italy, and the United States.
The majority of writers have a Montreal
connection, and many of the selections are
translated from the French. The remainder are
from Toronto and Ottawa, with Miriam Waddington
as the lone westerner. There is a good mix of
earlier writers-such as Waddington, Leonard
Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Chava Rosenfarb, and
Naim Kattan-and more recent writers like Robert
Majzels, Robyn Sarah, Judith Kalman, Matt Cohen,
and Anne Michaels (of Fugitive Pieces fame).
The anthology provides an inviting selection of
essays, short stories, and novel excerpts. The
shadow of the Holocaust falls across several of
the selections, such as Rosenfarb's A Friday in
the Life of Sarah Zonabend, Majzels' Hellman's
Scrapbook, Gabriella Goliger's Maladies of the
Inner Ear and Michaels' Fugitive Pieces, among
others. Monique Bosco's excerpt from her feminist
novel Sara Sage and Robyn Sarah's short story
Looking for My Keys are both intense,
first-person narratives about a woman analyzing a
key moment in her life. Some of the selections
are traditional short stories, while others are
more experimental in nature, such as the
nightmarish excerpt from Regine Robin's novel The
Wanderer. What follows is a selection of
highlights from the anthology.
No collection would be complete without Mordecai
Richler. I've loved his writing every since my
brother Zalman gave me a copy of The
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz when I was
thirteen. I enjoyed re-reading the excerpt from
Barney's Version (1997). As usual, Richler is
laugh-out-loud funny. United Jewish Appeal
fundraiser Irv Nussbaum's commentary is
priceless: "We've got a problem this year.
There's been a decline in the number of
anti-Semitic outrages ?. Don't get me wrong. I'm
against anti-Semitism. But every time some
asshole daubs a swastika on a synagogue wall or
knocks over a stone in one of our cemeteries, our
guys get so nervous they phone me with pledges."
Leonard Cohen is represented in short excerpts
from his first novel (he wrote two-who knew?),
the autobiographical The Favourite Game (1963).
His dry, ironic wit ("The Japs and Germans were
beautiful enemies. They had buck teeth or cruel
monocles and commanded in crude English with much
saliva") and poetic sensibility ("He lay under
the lilacs. The flowers were almost gone, they
looked like molecular diagrams. Sky was immense.
Cover me with black fire") are both present. The
novel's literary interest lies mainly in Cohen's
experimentation with a different genre and
autobiographical reflections.
Miriam Waddington's essay Mrs Maza's Salon (1989)
transports you to the cultural salon of Yiddish
poet Ida Maza. Waddington met Mrs. Maza in 1931,
when she was fourteen and had already been
writing poetry herself for four years. Mrs. Maza
took the budding writer under her wing, guiding
her reading and immersing her in a rich Yiddish
cultural life. In Mrs. Maza's lounge poets and
painters shared their work, ideas, and gossip.
She provided not only artistic but material and
spiritual succor: "To these artists, most of them
middle-aged and impecunious, and all of them
immigrants, Mrs. Maza was the eternal mother-the
foodgiver and nourisher, the listener and
solacer, the mediator between them and the
world." It's a beautiful evocation of a time now
past.
Iraqi immigrant Naim Kattan's first book of
essays won the Prix France-Canada in 1971. His
short story The Dancer (1994), is about a woman's
evolution from wife and mother to a being of
sensuality and power. Lena and her husband Solly
(Latifa and Selim) immigrate to Montreal from
Iraq. Belly dancing classes unleash an innate
ability to dance and reveal an unsuspected vein
of sensuality. Lena learns to revel in her exotic
looks that are not admired in her community: "She
no longer tried to hide her dark skin under
dreary, dull-colored dresses. She was no longer
in Baghdad. Ugly, blond, blue-eyed girls were a
dime a dozen." Finally, at a family wedding she
reaches the height of her power: "Her body had
become the music . . . . They encircle her,
vibrating to the movements of her thighs, her
breasts, her belly." The story may leave some
uneasy-is Lena's transformation a male fantasy of
female empowerment?
The excerpt from Robert Majzels' novel Hellman's
Scrapbook (1992) is extremely disturbing. Majzels
is an award-winning Montreal writer and the child
of Holocaust survivors. The protagonist, writing
from an asylum, describes a humiliating childhood
synagogue visit, interspersed with graphic scenes
of his father's degradation in a concentration
camp. At the rabbi's constant urging and despite
the mother's disapproval, the father, Mr.
Hellman, brings his son to synagogue for the
first time. The son throws up during the service,
causing a commotion: "Everyone turned to see Mr.
Hellman drag his son into the aisle, the faithful
parting as the puky boy tottered blindly past."
Meanwhile, Mr. Hellman waits in line to use the
disgusting barrack toilets: "You can think of
nothing else: your mind tied, inexorably bound to
your bowels. You must make a decision before your
turn comes: to risk forcing a weak trickle of
shit or just urinate quickly and get away." The
mutual humiliation of father and son is raw and
ugly.
Matt Cohen's short story The Sins of Tomas
Benares (1985) is a pleasure, particularly
because Cohen's use of language is so rich and
polished. In recounting the tragic life of Dr.
Tomas Benares, Cohen's character descriptions are
particularly delicious: "That old man, Tomas'
grandfather, had been a round, brown apple baked
dry by the sun and surrounded by a creamy white
fringe of beard." It's a classic short
story-compact yet packed with detail. Just two
weeks before his untimely death from lung cancer
in 1999, Cohen won the Governor General's Award
for his last novel, Elizabeth and After.
The anthology concludes with an excerpt from
Michael Redhill's Giller Prize-nominated novel
Martin Sloane (2001). Born in the United States
in 1966, Redhill is the youngest author in the
anthology. In this excerpt, Martin has just moved
with his family to Galway for the sake of
Martin's health. His father is Irish Catholic,
his mother Jewish. The religious differences
cause some family tension, occasionally humorous,
such as the parents arguing over taking Martin to
church to thank the Virgin. Neither fish nor fowl
in this environment, family ups and downs will
eventually take them to Martin's maternal
grandparents in Montreal. Family is the thematic
heart of this piece. As Martin's mother says, "No
matter what happens for good or bad, family is
all we have." Which seems a fine sentiment on
which to conclude this review.