Joe Salsberg: A Life of Commitment by Gerald Tulchinsky (review)

By the mid-twentieth century, working-class immigrant neighbourhoods, or “foreign quarters,” in Canadian cities succeeded in electing members of minority ethnic groups to various levels of government in Canada. As Gerald Tulchinsky’s fascinating biography makes clear, Joe Salsberg, a Polish-born Jew who served as alderman for Toronto’s Ward 4 from 1938 to 1943, and as the member for St Andrew’s riding in Ontario’s provincial parliament from 1943 to 1955, was among the most noteworthy.

As the author of three major studies on the history of Jews in Canada, Tulchinsky is exceptionally well positioned to explain Salsberg’s appeal to his constituents. Salsberg, who left school before he turned fourteen to help support his family by working in a leather-goods factory and later as a cutter in the cap and hat industry, shared many of the characteristics of his constituents. In 1931, the majority of the voters in his ward were working-class Jews. Like many of them, he was inspired by the socialist-Zionist traditions to fight for both social justice and the preservation of Jewish cultural life. He spoke to them in Yiddish about matters of importance to them. Thanks to his oratorical and organizational abilities, he soon became an organizer for the communist-led Industrial Union of Needle Trade Workers, which appealed to both Jewish and non-Jewish workers. During the 1930s he played a central role in the cio’s coming to Canada. Indeed, the role of Jewish communists such as Salsberg in Canada’s labour history is such an important subject that one wishes Tulchinsky would have said even more about his role in the labour movement.

From labour organizing, Salsberg moved to a career in politics. In exploring Salsberg’s relationship to his constituents, the biography captures the flavour of life in Toronto’s immigrant neighbourhoods in the mid-twentieth century. Understandably, given Tulchinsky’s expertise in Jewish history, he focuses primarily on Toronto’s Jews. But Salsberg’s influence was broader. Ties of ethnicity and religion naturally linked him to Jews. But his working-class background and activism attracted the support of immigrant and minority workers from other groups who lived and worked alongside Jewish workers in Toronto.

Making extensive use of the literature on the communist Left in Canada, Tulchinsky elucidates the complex relationship between some immigrant groups and the Communist Party of Canada (cpc). It was no accident that the cpc was most influential among Ukrainians, Finns, and Jews. Some members of each of these groups arrived in this country with strong left-wing traditions and they viewed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as the harbinger of a better world. Tulchinsky shows that Salsberg, and many of his contemporaries, supported the Jewish Left both because of its commitment to social justice and its role in preserving secular Jewish culture through the medium of Yiddish. Their support for the cpc and the ussr was also inspired by both class and ethnic loyalties. They believed the communists’ universalistic claims to oppose intolerance generally and anti-Semitism specifically. The Soviet government’s approval of Birobidjan, as a Jewish national territory in 1928, fortified Jewish support. Such great hopes explain the bitterness and disillusionment felt by many Jews once they learned that not only were the Bolsheviks not committed to helping Soviet Jews to maintain their distinct ethnic identity, but some of their leaders were anti-Semites, quite willing on occasion to exploit anti-Semitism to shift the blame for Soviet problems onto the Jews. Salsberg was more willing than most cpc members to criticize the party’s assault on ethnic cultures. In 1929, for example, he was briefly expelled from the party for resisting its bolshevization. Soon, however, he submitted to party discipline. While at various party meetings he alleged that the Soviet Union was practising anti-Semitism and suppressing Jewish cultural expression after the Second World War, he denied allegations of Soviet anti-Semitism in public until he left...