Volume 20, numéro 1, 2023

EN :

This paper examines the rise of antisemitism in contemporary Canada and explores some emerging social trends that may exacerbate and enable it. Specifically, the rise and maintenance of antisemitism in Canada may be, in part, due to the multifaceted diversification of the West known as super-diversity, as well as increasing political polarization. By examining super-diversity and its implications, this paper explores the connections between immigration and diversification, the growth of political polarization, and the rise in antisemitism across Canada. This paper argues how the aforementioned social trends may lead to the existence of more antisemitic manifestations and motivations in Canada. Of particular concern is the importation of certain anti-Israel and anti-Zionist biases found within populations arriving in Canada and coming from parts of the world where tensions with Israel are present. Additionally, political polarization heightens intergroup tensions in Canada and may foster a broader atmosphere of prejudice.

EN :

This article examines Rabbi Ovadia's sermons, exploring his stance on women through folktales and narratives dedicated to halakhic scenario-building. Yosef's editorial intervention in a folktale by Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad is discussed, revealing his departure from the trope of woman as seducer and a shift in the status of the evil inclination. In short narratives of halakhic scenarios, Yosef prefers depicting religiously empowered "good" women. However, the subtext of these sermons is not an untheorized feminism; instead, they express Yosef's pragmatic worldview. Yosef's positive concept of the human psyche and its capacity for reason, dignity, and virtue guided his editorial decisions in severing the link between women and sin, endowing women with responsibility and agency. Yosef believed negative depictions of women as temptation's embodiment, lacking inherent religious value, harmed the religious well-being of both men and women. Thus, pragmatic considerations led him to craft narratives with reduced misogyny and gynophobia.

EN :

Viewing the Biblical book of Esther’s Queen Vashti, chiefly through two lenses, traditional rabbinic commentaries, and how some contemporary authors, primarily poets writing in English, Vashti is seen as someone victimized, someone vilified, but also a woman to be venerated.

EN :

Anna Raginsky (1891-1981) was a transformative figure in Canadian Jewish activism. Raised in a family steeped in social causes, she became a leader in Zionist efforts at a young age. By 17, she held a leadership position in a Toronto Zionist council, and by 20, she was the first woman deputy president of the Toronto Zionist council. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Raginsky secured significant donations for pre-state Israel and championed groundbreaking projects. During World War II, her focus shifted to supporting European Jewry and the war effort. Her involvement in numerous organizations and lifelong commitment to Canadian Jewry and Israel cemented her place as a pioneer. Importantly, her leadership paved the way for a more prominent role for women in Canadian Jewish activism.

EN :

The poem “As coisas têm alma” by Maria José de Queiroz (1934-2023), and the book Lição de Coisas by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987), illuminate the reading of Mameloshn: memória em carne viva (2004) and O padeiro polonês (2015) by Halina Grynberg. The eleven-year time that separates the two novels does not make their reading more palatable. On the contrary, the doubling of the number 1 (one) points symbolically to the double condition of the narratives. In both, “the memory in the flesh” translates to “the violence of being a survivor,” as stated by Nilton Bonder (2004). The Holocaust, he adds, generates cruelty, exile from one’s homeland and, mainly, exile from human territory, humans’ most primitive language. In this sense, the things or items referenced, cited or listed bring into play objects and things that are part of a ruined world that is mobilized through memory by writers and narrators.