Numerous writers of special interest to the Jewish community appeared recently at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors, Toronto’s pre-eminent literary event. Their presence insured that Jewish themes were well represented. American Jewish writer Grace Paley, interviewed publicly by Toronto newspaper columnist David Lewis Stein, spoke engagingly about art and politics, the two activities to…
The art of magazine profiles
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The New Yorker or Maclean’s Magazine: which has perfected the art of the magazine profile to a higher degree? Magazine lovers will recognize that the question is rhetorical and doesn’t require an answer. After all, it was the New Yorker that invented, about 1927, the modern intimate journalistic essay we recognize as a magazine profile.…
A name riddle from the Bible
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Unnamed characters, such as Lot’s wife, Jephthah’s daughter, Pharoah’s baker and the medium of Endor, abound in the Bible. Why dispense with a name? Adele Reinhartz, currently on sabbatical from her position as professor in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University, has studied the question in depth. Her book “Why Ask My Name?”:…
Bestseller based on ancient menorah
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The massive golden menorah from the Holy Temple of Jerusalem is the coveted object that fuels the modern-day action-adventure in Saskatchewan-born author David Gibbins’s second novel Crusader Gold, published this year by Headline Press of Britain and available under that imprint in Canada. Gibbins, who appeared at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto in…
Rill’s thrillers
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“I write to entertain, I don’t write to preach,” said Eric Rill on a recent visit to Toronto, during a publicity tour (2004) for his latest book, The Innocent Traitor (Georgetown Publications). A former top executive in the hotel industry originally from Montreal, Rill’s first novel, Pinnacle of Deceit, a political thriller, was a surprise…
Two by David Liss
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Ever since Poe, the detective has figured as a major archetypal hero in modern fiction. Literary detectives have emerged in so many personas and guises that there are now more than a minyan’s worth of Jewish gumshoes in the bookshops, ranging from Howard Engel’s Benny Cooperman to Harry Kemerman’s Rabbi David Small. (An internet search…
Obit: Ben Kayfetz
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Forty years ago, Ben Kayfetz, the longtime director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress, flew to Cuba to oversee distribution of a shipment of kosher food to Havana’s isolated Jewish community of 2,500. Benjamin Gershon Kayfetz, former community relations director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, born Toronto, December 24, 1916; died Toronto, February…
Obit: Anthony Adamson (1906-2002)
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Anthony Adamson, the architect who designed Upper Canada Village and oversaw the restoration of Hamilton’s Dundurn Castle, has died in Toronto (May 2002) at the age of 95. Descended from some of the most wealthy and historic families in Upper Canada, Adamson used to joke that he had been “relatively successful in the inheritance business.”…
Obit: Isabel LeBourdais (1909-2003)
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When Isabel LeBourdais first heard that an Ontario court had condemned a 14-year-old boy to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, she was appalled that the criminal justice system showed no interest in giving a deeply maladjusted teenager the psychological therapy he so obviously required. But her opinion quickly changed once…
David Kertzer on the Vatican’s role in anti-semitism
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Forcing Jews to wear yellow badges and keeping them locked up in ghettoes were not cruelties that the Nazis invented in the 20th century, but rather practices that the popes “had championed for hundreds of years,” says the author of a new book condemning the Vatican for its role in promulgating the hatred that led…
