In “Why Poems Should Not Be Fictions,” one of the pieces in Libby Scheier’s Kaddish For My Father: New and Selected Poems, 1970-1999 (ECW Press, 1999), the Toronto poet seems to imply that there’s already too much artifice in the world and that the poet should perform her art unmasked, without resorting to a narrative…
Mayne’s September Rain
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One needs a “strong sense of perseverance” to be a poet, says Seymour Mayne, the Ottawa professor and wordsmith whose recent slim volume September Rain (Mosaic Press) is the 29th book of poetry he’s published since 1964 — “ken eina hora, almost 41 years ago.” Educated at the Talmud Torah in his native Montreal, Mayne…
God and the American Writer
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American literary critic Alfred Kazin spoke at the International Festival of Authors on the subject of his latest book, God and the American Writer (Knopf, 1997) — namely, the supreme relevance of God to public discourse in America in the last century, versus God’s supreme irrelevance to public discourse today. Whether they were believers or not,…
Harold Bloom’s Book of J
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She lived in Jerusalem almost 3,000 years ago, in the time of King Solomon and his hapless son and successor, Rehoboam. A contemporary of the historian who chronicled Solomon’s court, she wrote in the Phoenician-Old Hebrew script, probably using a reed pen on sheets of papyrus that were later glued into scrolls. Known to modern…
Surviving the Censor: The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam
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This year’s Jewish Book Fair (2006) features Toronto poet Rafi Aaron, whose few published volumes to date have traveled surprisingly far and gained impressive renown in the world. On November 12, Aaron and friends are due to present a celebration in words and music of the life and poetry of Osip Mandelstam, the legendary Russian-Jewish…
Former Yiddish Theatre may become heritage site
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Toronto city councilors are set to debate a recommendation this week from the City Hall heritage department to designate the former Standard Theatre at Dundas and Spadina — a once-thriving Yiddish theatre that later became the Victory movie house and burlesque palace — as a heritage site worthy of limited protection. Since its last incarnation…
Obit: Harry Rasky, Film Pioneer (2007)
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Known for his award-winning cinematic portraits of such iconic artists as Marc Chagall, Tennessee Williams, Leonard Cohen, Henry Moore, Yousuf Karsh, Arthur Miller and George Bernard Shaw, Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Harry Rasky has died in Toronto at age 78. A co-founder of the news-documentary department of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Rasky made more than 50…
On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz
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“Let my people know” is the chief motto of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, one of the pre-eminent “talmud hakhums” of our generation and the subject of this engaging book by Arthur Kurzweil. Widely regarded as a genius, Steinsaltz has penned dozens of books in which he attempts to bring the fire of Jewish mysticism down to…
Breaking Bread with Joel Hecker
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Dr. Joel Hecker, who for more than a decade has been an associate professor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in the Philadelphia area, visited his home town of Toronto recently to lecture on his book, Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah, an erudite study published by an American university press in…
Chaim Grade letters find home in YIVO
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Readers of Jewish literature will be interested to know that a cache of about 50 letters by Lithuanian-born novelist and poet Chaim Grade (1910-1982) have surfaced in Toronto. The letters belong to Sally Eisner, a longtime North York resident who, together with her late husband Leon Eisner, was a close friend of the New York-based…
