Canadian Jewish Anthology / Anthologie juive du Canada ed. by Yaacov Zipper, Chaim Spilberg, and: Identifications: Ethnicity and the Writer in Canada ed. by Jars Balan, and: Uncle Mike's Edenbridge: Memoirs of a Jewish Pioneer Farmer by Michael Usiskin (review)

496 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 collaborators for enabling all these writers to speak to us in English with such energia. (CHARLES LELAND) Yaacov Zipper and Chaim Spilberg, editors. Canadian Jewish Anthologyl Anthologie juive du Canada Canadian Jewish Congress 1982. 672. Jars Balan, editor. Identifications: Ethnicity and the Writer in Canada Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta 1982. Michael Usiskin. Uncle Mike's Edenbridge: Memoirs ofa Jewish Pioneer Farmer, translated by Marcia Usiskin Basman. Peguis Publishers. 17+ $9.00 paper Canada continues to be a visible point on the map of 'Yiddishland: the world of Yiddish literature. Attesting to this fact is the publication of Kanader yidisher zamlbukh, edited by Yaacov Zipper and Chaim Spilberg (Canadian Jewish Anthology/Anthologie juive du Canada). In their introduction the editors attempt to state the aim of this anthology. They hope that the 1981 centenary of the onset ofEastern European Jewish mass arrival in Canada will call renewed attention to the Yiddish creativity of these immigrants. The Yiddish language and culture were not only tools used in the building of this new community but also a significant creation and expression of its spiritual life. Now that the period of Yiddish creativity in Canada is drawing to a close, the intention of the anthologists is to identify and register all of the past cultural achievements for'the purpose of evaluation and preservation: The editors believe that, in the Jewish cultural tradition, the creation of such a compilation has often led to the reintegration of these achievements and to their renewal within that tradition.They affirm the necessity of this process for Yiddish in Canada but do not view their anthology as such a sweeping enterprise. Rather, it is, in their words, 'an initial effort' and 'an attempt to present a representative segment of Yiddish literary achievement in Canada: About 80 per cent of this trilingual anthology is in Yiddish. Both the English and French sections contain synopses of the Yiddish material. The English section includes a statistically outdated sociological profile of the Montreal Jewish community by Michael Rosenberg, and an interview with Irving Layton, conducted by Mervin Butovsky. The French section consists of selections from several Canadian-Yiddish poets in translation, taken from Charles Dobzynski's anthology Le Miroir d'un peuple, and a play entitled 'acob et Esaii by Nairn Kattan. No treatment of the francophone Sephardi community in Canada is offered. HUMANITIES 497 Thematically and qualitatively this anthology is a scattershot affair. The Yiddish section is divided into five parts: 'literary essays, poetry, fiction, social and cultural studies of Jewish life in Canada and tributes: Most of the articles placed under the opening rubric have some semblance of thematic coherence. They form a collection of evaluations of CanadianYiddish authors. However, this segment is interspersed with several pieces that are relevant neither to the main subject nor to each other. The Yiddish titles of these rubrics and their English translations do not always adequately describe all of the articles included under them. There is np justification for the inclusion under the rubric 'fiction' of a memoir of the Polish-Yiddish writer I.M. Weissenberg by his daughter Pearl Weissenberg Axelrod, or ofa memoir of the Majdanek concentration camp by Paul Trepman. Sixteen poets and seven prose writers are represented under the rubrics of Yiddish poetry and prose. The editors seem to assume that anything written in Yiddish by a writer who was at some point a resident in Canada is a part of Canadian-Yiddish literature. No attempt is made to raise the question of what a Canadian-Yiddish writer is, let alone to distinguish between a Yiddish 'emigre writer' and a Yiddish writer who confronts some aspect of Canadian reality. The editors regret the limitations imposed on this volume. They acknowledge their failure to obtain a sufficient number of contributions on the development of Canadian Jewish life. This reviewer shares their feeling. Studies of the Canadian Jewish labour movement and of the communal, cultural, and educational institutions of CanadianJewry in the course of the past century would have shed light on the matrix within which Canadian-Yiddish literature developed. Helpful in this regard are Shloime Wiseman's memoir of the Montreal Jewish...