FOR MANY JEWS of a certain age in Canada, Yiddish is the language their grandparents spoke when they didn’t want the children to understand their conversations.Many non-Jews may not realize they already know a smattering of this rich and historic language when they schmooze about glitches, or kibitz about klutzes.¹

This spring, Ottawa joined the ranks of New York and Paris as home to an intensive course in Yiddish language and culture. This University of Ottawa course, offered as part of the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program and taught by Professor Rebecca Margolis, is by no means ordinary. Yes, all University of Ottawa students may register in this undergraduate course, but elements of this ambitious program are also open, free of charge, to members of the larger community — to anyone interested in learning more about Yiddish culture.

“Our goal is to create bridges between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, as well as to connect University of Ottawa students to the larger community of Ottawa,” explains Margolis. There’s a lot of culture to be celebrated, such as medieval texts, modern poetry, films dating from the 1930s and the works of Sholom Aleichem. “We’re hoping for a multicultural classroom. Yiddish is part of our shared Canadian heritage and it should be open and accessible to all Canadians,” says Margolis, the newest addition to the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program.

Yiddish, closely related to modern German and written using the Hebrew alphabet, traces its roots back more than a thousand years. The language came to Canada with Ashkenazi Jews, who immigrated from Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. “I like to refer to Yiddish as the portable civilization of Ashkenazi Jewry because it’s much more than a language,” explains Margolis. “In the 19th and 20th centuries it was regarded as an army for people in exile. Yiddish speakers have no physical monuments. The language is the monument to a thousand years of civilization.”

Because Yiddish can be studied in so many Canadian contexts — historical, geographic, intellectual, popular and artistic, to name a few — it provides a gateway into the examination of the many issues facing Canadian society today. Its study, for example, gives students “a way of understanding how immigration shapes and continues to shape our society,” says Pierre Anctil, director of the Institute of Canadian Studies and co-coordinator of the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program. “A full hundred years of Jewish community in this country gives us an experience which helps us understand the integration of more recent arrivals to Canada. In a broad sense, it’s of interest to everyone in Canada.”

The program was encouraged by a $1 million pledge of support by the Vered family, explains Anctil. It received final approval in fall 2006 and will be in full swing by September 2007. Meanwhile, there’s been a constant buzz about Jewish Canadian Studies courses on campus, including three new courses that will be taught in winter 2007: History of the Jews in Canada, Yiddish Canada in the Twentieth Century, and Canadian Writers: The Making of a Tradition (taught by Professor Seymour Mayne, cocoordinator of the program). A more complete roster of courses will follow Margolis’ intensive summer Yiddish language and culture course in fall 2007.

To date, Anctil is elated by the progress of the program. “It’s off to a stellar start,” he says. “A clear majority of the students have no background in the field of Jewish studies and are, in fact, non-Jews.” For Anctil, this fact points to the inherent significance of the program: the study of Jewish immigration to Canada in the last century and how Jews negotiated their ways around difficult obstacles, including anti-Semitism and a generalized resistance to different cultures and religions, to become full participants as Canadian citizens. “This process is not unique to Jews,” states Anctil. It generally takes more than one generation for immigrants to move from marginal to full participants in this country.

In a microcosm, the study of the Jewish Canadian experience — whether through language, literature, music or theatre — and particularly the difficult process of adaptation in Canada, is the study of the forging of Canadian identity.

Sholem aleichem². . . to Yiddish at the University of Ottawa.


Susan Lightstone is an Ottawa-based lawyer and a freelance writer.

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¹ Schmooze, glitch, kibitz and klutz are just a smattering of the hundreds of words of Yiddish origin that have made their way into English and other languages.

² Sholem aleichem is a traditional Yiddish greeting, derived from the Hebrew (“peace unto you”). The traditional Muslim greeting —as-salaamu alaikum—also has the same meaning. Sholom Aleichem has additional significance for Jews. The words were also adopted as the pen name of author Solomon Rabinowitz (1859-1916), often referred to as the “Jewish Mark Twain” for his humorous, pithy tales.

Interested in learning more about Jewish Canadian Studies courses at the University of Ottawa? Visit www.canada.uOttawa.ca/en/ or call the Institute of Canadian Studies at 613-562-5800, ext. 3231.