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No Better Home?: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging

Edited by David S. Koffman

© 2021

This book begins with an audacious question: Has there ever been a better home for Jews than Canada? By certain measures, Canada might be the most socially welcoming, economically secure, and religiously tolerant country for Jews in the diaspora, past or present. No Better Home? takes this question seriously, while also exploring the many contested meanings of the idea of "home."

Contributors to the volume include leading scholars of Canadian Jewish life as well as eminent Jewish scholars writing about Canada for the first time. The essays compare Canadian Jewish life with the quality of life experienced by Jews in other countries, examine Jewish and non-Jewish interactions in Canada, analyse specific historical moments and literary texts, reflect deeply personal histories, and widen the conversation about the quality and timbre of the Canadian Jewish experience. No Better Home? foregrounds Canadian Jewish life and ponders all that the Canadian experience has to teach about Jewish modernity.

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Product Details

  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 328 pages
  • Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.7in x 9.0in
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SKU# SP005426

  • PUBLISHED JAN 2021

    From: $24.71

    Regular Price: $32.95

    ISBN 9781487523572
  • PUBLISHED JAN 2021

    From: $60.00

    Regular Price: $80.00

    ISBN 9781487504892
  • PUBLISHED NOV 2020

    From: $24.71

    Regular Price: $32.95

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Quick Overview

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.

No Better Home?: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging

Edited by David S. Koffman

© 2021

This book begins with an audacious question: Has there ever been a better home for Jews than Canada? By certain measures, Canada might be the most socially welcoming, economically secure, and religiously tolerant country for Jews in the diaspora, past or present. No Better Home? takes this question seriously, while also exploring the many contested meanings of the idea of "home."

Contributors to the volume include leading scholars of Canadian Jewish life as well as eminent Jewish scholars writing about Canada for the first time. The essays compare Canadian Jewish life with the quality of life experienced by Jews in other countries, examine Jewish and non-Jewish interactions in Canada, analyse specific historical moments and literary texts, reflect deeply personal histories, and widen the conversation about the quality and timbre of the Canadian Jewish experience. No Better Home? foregrounds Canadian Jewish life and ponders all that the Canadian experience has to teach about Jewish modernity.

Continue Reading Read Less

Product Details

  • World Rights
  • Page Count: 328 pages
  • Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.7in x 9.0in

  • Reviews

    "This is a fascinating volume filled with a number of intriguing and thoughtful contributions that approach the somewhat audacious theme from a variety of perspectives. It is a broad collection that mixes the intellectual with the emotional, allowing us to think and feel through the subject and ultimately reflect on the place of Jews in Canada in fresh ways."


    Hernan Tesler-Mabé, Department of History, University of Ottawa

    "Presented with sound and timely scholarship, and demonstrating a broad scope of research across disciplines, the collection engages an impressive of cadre of scholars to evaluate the quality of home and life for Jews through a variety of factors, including religious participation, encounters with antisemitism, cultural production, and economic success. This book was thoughtfully curated with a wide readership in mind, embracing an interdisciplinary approach to critically examining more than 150 years of Canadian Jewish experiences and the contemporary place of Jews in Canadian society."


    Adara Goldberg, Holocaust Resource Center, Kean University

  • Author Information

    David S. Koffman is the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry and an associate professor in the Department of History at York University.

  • Table of contents

    Introduction: What Does It Mean to Ask the Question “Has There Ever Been a Better Home for the Jews than Canada?”
    David S. Koffman

    Section I: Comparisons and Interactions

    1. A Privileged Diaspora: Canadian Jewry in Comparative Perspective
    Morton Weinfeld

    2. Destination World Jewry: The US vs. the World
    Hasia R. Diner

    3. Montreal and Canada through a Wider Lens: Confessions of a Canadian-American European Jewish Historian
    Lois C. Dubin

    4. The “Cossacks” and “Bolsheviks” Who Made Modern Canada: Ukrainians, Jews, and the Origins of Canadian Multiculturalism
    Jeffrey Veidlinger

    5. Vilna on the Saint Lawrence: Montreal as the Would-Be Haven for Yiddish Culture
    Kalman Weiser

    6. Jewish Education in Canada and the United Kingdom: A Comparative Perspective
    Randal F. Schnoor

    7. The Unsettling of Canadian Jewish History: Toward a Tangled History of Jewish-Indigenous Encounters in Canada
    David S. Koffman

    Section II: Flashpoints and Viewpoints

    8. Pictures of New Canadians: An Immigration Story for Our Time
    Norman Ravvin

    9. Crossing in/to Canada: Canada as Point of Arrival in Holocaust Survivor Memoirs
    Mia Spiro

    10. Electing Nathan Phillips: The Jewish Question and Toronto’s First Jewish Mayor
    Harold Troper

    11. The “Nu World” of Toronto in Bernice Eisenstein’s I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors
    Ruth Panofsky

    12. By the Rivers of the St. Lawrence: The Montreal Jewish Community and Its Postmemory
    Ira Robinson

    13. On Display: Canadian Museums and Narratives of the Canadian Jewish Experience
    Richard Menkis

    Section III: Intimacies and Languages

    14. Nothing is Forever: Remembering the Centennial
    Jack Kugelmass

    15. Forgetting and Forging: My Canadian Experience as a Moroccan Jew
    Yolande Cohen

    16. Under Gentile Eyes: My Jewish Childhood in Hamilton, 1950–1967
    Judith R. Baskin

    17. In der heym in kanada: A Survey on Yiddish Today
    Rebecca Margolis

    18. Which Canada Are We Talking About?: An English-Language Polemic about French in Canadian Jewish History
    Pierre Anctil

    Post-Script: Thin Canadian Culture, Thick Jewish Life
    David Weinfeld

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