Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies

Theresa Tova, the Paris-born, Calgary-raised actor, singer, and playwright, is synonymous with the Canadian Jewish musical stage. Creator of the award-winning Holocaust-themed musical Still the Night, one-third of the globe-trotting sensation The Three Yiddish Divas, and now starring as Yente in the first-ever Canadian production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, Theresa joins the show for a wide-ranging conversation about her life, career, and the relationship between identity, memoir, and performance. Catch Theresa in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, running May 25–June 2, 2026, at Toronto's Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company! This episode features snippets of Theresa's songs "Under Your White Starry Heaven," "Telling Stories," and "Night & Day," which you can listen to in full in the foregoing links! You can find all of Theresa's albums here.  And don't forget to check out the Canadian Jewish Life Writing Project, a new initiative to capture personal narratives about the Canadian Jewish experience!  This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

Museums have long been at the forefront of public engagement with the history and memory of the Holocaust. But as the possibilities of technology for discovery and learning about such an emotionally fraught subject expand, and the question of what the Holocaust has to teach us remains as thorny as ever, at museums old and new the goals of that public engagement are undergoing serious revision. Yasmine Lucas, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto, has written widely on the ways in which Holocaust museums in North America—their curators, advisors, funders, and visitors—are navigating this moment. She takes a particular interest in the Montreal Holocaust Museum, which is preparing to open a more modern and interactive exhibit inside a new building in 2027. Lucas joins the podcast to discuss the role of the twenty-first-century Holocaust museum, how curatorial decisions respond to the reality of a dwindling survivor population, and the changing needs and demands of visitors in a climate of political and social divisiveness.  For more, check out Lucas's recent essay, "Dimensions in Testimony: On Revamping Holocaust Museums," published in the spring 2025 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. And "Holocaust Sublime: The Naturalization of a Feeling," also from 2025, in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. Also, don't miss "Studies Show," a new collaboration between CJS / Éjc and Scribe Quarterly, the magazine of The Canadian Jewish News, designed to introduce academic research about Canadian Jewry to a wider readership! This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

In the second half of the twentieth century, approximately twenty thousand Jews emigrated from North Africa to Canada. Most of them were from Morocco, and most settled in and around Montreal. Yolande Cohen, a historian at the Université du Québec à Montréal and herself a Moroccan Jewish immigrant to Canada (via France), has spent much of her career collecting and analyzing narratives of this migration—its motivations, its traumas, its memories.  Cohen is the author of two new books, Moroccan Jews in France and Canada, and Migrations postcoloniales des Juifs du Maroc: Vers le Canada et la France, both published in 2025, and she joins the show to discuss not only the difficult histories she traces in her work but also the ways in which those histories have been received, challenged, and often ignored by Canada's Moroccan Jewish community. You can learn more about Cohen's personal journey in a bilingual essay she wrote for Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes back in 2024. And don't forget to check out the ACJS's new digital archive of the Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal (1977-1988), also mentioned in this episode!  This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

Political extremist, fascist agitator, marginal crank? Adrien Arcand, the Montreal-based journalist and publicist, was one of mid-twentieth-century Canada's most notorious antisemites. Known as the "Canadian Führer," Arcand has long been viewed, in scholarship and public memory, as the leading exemplar of Quebec antisemitism from the 1930s through the 1950s, and one of the greatest ontological threats to Jewish life in Canada in those decades. But what do we actually know about Arcand's influence? Tyler Wentzell, a historian of far-right extremism in Canada, takes up this question in a forum published in the fall 2025 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. In "Rethinking Adrien Arcand in Historical Context," Wentzell looks specifically at Arcand's reception in English-language newspapers from 1929-1940; his collaborators in the forum, the historians Pierre Anctil and Simon-Pierre Lacasse, examine the Montreal Yiddish press and postwar Quebec's Catholic hierarchy, respectively. In this episode, Wentzell sits down with host Jonathan Slater to discuss one of the forum's guiding questions: What does a history of Arcand that looks beyond his inflammatory words and activities, to how he was received (and challenged) in French-Catholic, Jewish, and English Canadian communities, tell us about the history of hate in Canada and the ways in which diverse groups have found solidarity in confronting extremism? Click here to read "Rethinking Adrien Arcand in Historical Context." You can also read the forum, in complete French translation as "Repenser Adrien Arcand dans son context historique," here. Also check out Wentzell's related article, "Scenes of Berlin: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Toronto during the Summer of 1938," published in CJS / Éjc in spring 2023.  This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

In 2025, the Azrieli Foundation's landmark Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program (HSMP) celebrated its twentieth year in existence. To mark the occasion, the journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes brought together six scholars, along with HSMP managing editor Arielle Berger, for a robust conversation that reflects on the educational, cultural, and moral legacy of the program.  On this episode of Tête-à-tête, host Jonathan Slater sits down with two of those scholars, Carson Phillips and Sara R. Horowitz, for a discussion about their deep involvement with the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program over the years, and how the HSMP captures the dynamic interplay between survivor testimony, translation practices, Holocaust education, and public memory in the Canadian context. This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

Last year, two of the leading historians of Jewish Canada, Pierre Anctil and Richard Menkis, published In a "Land of Hope": Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, volume 1, 1627-1923, a landmark collection of primary sources. Thanks to the generous support of York University's J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry and the University of British Columbia's Open Access Fund, the volume's publisher, The Champlain Society, has made all of the primary sources freely available to read online. In this episode, Richard Menkis, who teaches at the University of British Columbia, chats with host Jonathan Slater about the reader: how it came to be, its contents, uses, and its value for anyone interested in Canadian Jewish history. Menkis, the ACJS's Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award winner in 2018, also discusses his circuitous path into Canadian Jewish studies, and the state of the field.  Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected] 

Over the past couple of years, no scholar has tried to understand what makes Canadian Jews tick with greater energy and enthusiasm than the sociologist Robert Brym. Since publishing his groundbreaking post-October 7 report, "Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions," in the spring of 2024, Brym has gone on to produce similarly pioneering research on Jewish intermarriage and continuity; visible, Indigenous, and gender minorities within Canadian Jewry; and antisemitism in Ontario's K-12 school system, among other topics. Brym's fascination with the sociology of Canadian Jewry dates back decades, and for his larger body of work the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies awarded him its Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award in 2025. In this episode, Brym reflects on his recent findings with host Jonathan Slater while looking ahead to even more vital contributions, including a study on Jewish voting patterns in the 2025 Canadian federal election, coming out in the months ahead.  Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

In this special episode, host Jonathan Slater passes the microphone to historian David S. Koffman, the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry, for a solo reading of his excellent essay, "Two Inward Turns: Canadian Jews Since Multiculturalism, Since October 8, and Since Trump's Annexationist Threat," which appeared in the summer 2025 volume of Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, published by the Shalom Hartman Institute.  We want to express our gratitude to the Shalom Hartman Institute for helping us bring David's words from the page to the podcast, and give thanks in particular to Claire Sufrin, director of research and publication at SHI-North America and editor-in-chief of Sources, who joins us on the show to introduce David's work. We also thank Karen Kollins, the Shalom Hartman Institute's Canada director and the lead on its Courageous Leadership Canada program, for which the germ of this essay was created. You can read David's essay here in the summer 2025 volume of Sources.    This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

Ruth Panofsky, a writer, literary scholar, and professor of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, sits down with host Jonathan Slater to examine the making of renowned Canadian Jewish writer Helen Weinzweig's seminal 1989 short story "My Mother's Luck." Working with material from Weinzweig's estate and the author's papers at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Ruth traces the story's evolution and examines Weinzweig's writing process in volume 40 of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. Ruth and Jonathan chat about how a scholar navigates the archive of a writer, Weinzweig's fascination with biography and her distinctive authorial voice, and her legacy as a Canadian Jewish woman writer.  Click here to read Ruth's essay, along with recently unearthed early drafts of "My Mother's Luck." The entire volume is free to read on our website.  This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

In this episode we speak with Miriam Borden, a doctoral candidate in Yiddish studies at the University of Toronto and contributor to the summer 2024 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, which is devoted entirely to the field of Jewish education. Miram chats with host Jonathan Slater about her article, "Joshua, King David, and the Flying Nun: Doodles and Reader Annotations in Post-Holocaust Yiddish Primers for Children," which unpacks what the (often vulgar) marginalia that kids left behind in those textbooks reveals about the relationship between the Yiddish language and Jewish identity in a postwar Canadian context.  Click here to read Miriam's essay. The entire summer 2024 volume is free to read on our website. This episode was produced and edited by Michelle Chang. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected].

"If you have not been to Łódź you cannot imagine its texture, the strange uniqueness of its streetscape...." In this episode we speak with Norman Ravvin, writer, literary scholar, Concordia University professor, and contributor to the fall 2024 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. Norm discusses with host Jonathan Slater his essay, "City, Writer, Conference: A Chava Rosenfarb Conference in Łódź, Poland, October 2023," a moving on-the-ground report from Łódź, where he attended a centennial conference devoted to the Canadian Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb, who was born in the city. Click here to read Norm's essay. The entire volume is free to read on our website. This episode was produced and edited by Michelle Chang. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected]. 

In this episode we speak with Daniel Held, co-editor of the special summer 2024 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, which dives into the many varieties of Jewish education in Canada, past, present, and future. Dan, the chief program officer for the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto and executive director of the Julia and Henry Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education, discusses current trends challenging Jewish educational institutions and programs and shares his vision for how Jewish education can continue to flourish in Canada.  Click here to read Dan's co-authored introduction to the volume. The entire volume is free to read on our website. This episode was produced and edited by Michelle Chang. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman.   Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at [email protected]. 

Welcome to Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies, a new podcast from the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies. Join host Jonathan Slater, an emeritus professor of communications based in Montreal, each month for incisive and thought-provoking conversations with scholars, journalists, curators, and more, whose work fills the pages of the ACJS's flagship journal, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes.  Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work and how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON.  For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter.  Credits: Host: Jonathan Slater Producer/Editor: Michelle Chang Music: J. K. Bradley Executive Producers: Joshua Tapper and David S. Koffman