Jewish studies evolves

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

“The Jewish commitment to lifelong learning has its roots in traditional Jewish life. In the past, however, there were limitations: women were, for the most part, discouraged to pursue advanced studies in Jewish texts, and the poor could hardly afford to spend much of their time in study. Now, it is not just the religious men who are wanting to study religious texts, but women and men, both religious and secular, are looking to study literature and history as well as the traditional texts,” explained Prof. Richard Menkis of the University of British Columbia to the Independent in an interview about the development of Jewish studies over the last 25-plus years.

Menkis, who came to Vancouver in 1986, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Toronto, and his PhD at Brandeis. For the third year of his BA, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taking courses in Jewish history in both English and Hebrew.

“I first thought I would specialize in medieval Jewish history, and that was my focus in Toronto,” he explained. “When I got to Brandeis, I moved more into the early modern period (i.e. 1500-1800). Once I started at UBC, however, I realized that there was a great deal of work to do in Canadian Jewish history, and that’s become my field of research.

“But I also realized that the field needed some infrastructure. I was thus the founding editor, in 1993, of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies, and continued to edit it until 2000. With Norman Ravvin, I edited a collection of essays in Canadian Jewish cultural studies; it is currently used in classrooms in several universities in Canada. And, in order to improve the reference tools in the area, Harold Troper and I agreed to be divisional editors for Canada in the second edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica, and the 240 articles on Canada doubled what was in the first edition, and we did not include many of the articles from first edition.”

Currently, Menkis is cross-appointed to UBC’s department of classical, Near Eastern and religious studies (CNERS) and the department of history. He is working on a book with Troper of the University of Toronto, who is co-author with Irving Abella of None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. Menkis’ and Troper’s topic – Canada and the 1936 Olympics – developed out of the exhibition that the pair co-researched and co-wrote for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which was on display between October 2009 and October 2010.

Menkis has in press articles about the history of the Conservative, Reconstructionist and Renewal movements in Canada, to complement an older article he wrote on the Reform movement, and, he added, “I am also working on a long project on how Canadian Jewish history has been written, and how Jewish and non-Jewish audiences have reacted to works on Canadian Jewish history. For example, the reactions to None is Too Many are fascinating, as are the reactions to research on antisemitism in Quebec.”

Menkis gave the Independent a run-down on other research being done at UBC by various professors. Among others, including Robert Daum (now at Vancouver School of Theology, but who is still supervising two students who began when he was at UBC) in rabbinics, Menkis mentioned Daphna Arbel, who studies ancient Jewish mysticism, as well as issues relating to gender and Jewish culture; Gregg Gardner researching rabbinics; and new arrival Sara Milstein, whose area of expertise is Hebrew Bible, replaces Paul Mosca, who just retired. He also noted that, in history, Chris Friedrichs is conducting research on the German-Jewish experience and, in English, Ira Nadel has written definitive biographies of a number of Jewish literary figures.

As for his own work, Menkis said, “I have always tried to offer courses that focus on how Jews react to their political, social, religious and cultural environments. As such, I do not believe that the only courses that should be taught in Jewish studies should be about antisemitism, or that we can only teach Holocaust courses. Jewish history is about more than victimization.

“I regularly offer two courses that are cross-listed between CNERS and history, a survey of medieval and modern Jewish history. In history, I also teach a course on the history of the Holocaust and developed a seminar that I have offered twice on the historiography of genocide.”

Among his upcoming courses is a seminar called Topics in Modern Judaism: Jews, Judaism and the Graphic Novel, which will be starting in January 2013. In the seminar, explained Menkis, “We will be looking at the views of Jewish history and life conveyed in graphic novels. Jews have had a crucial role in the development of this genre (Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Harvey Pekar and Joe Kubert, who just died on Aug. 12), and the representations conveyed in both words and images are fascinating. We will look at how graphic novelists have created a subculture with works that offer sophisticated and anti-establishment views of the Jewish past and present. We will also be looking at some of the lesser-known graphic novelists, especially women. Yeshivah University curated a fascinating exhibition on women authors (Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women), which also has an online presence. It has given me some ideas for the course as well.”

Menkis stressed the importance of offering new options for students. From his 25-year-plus vantage point, he said, “I am not just excited about my courses in Jewish studies, I am very pleased that we are offering an excellent range of courses. When I arrived at UBC, I had the Jewish studies position and taught most of the courses in Jewish studies (or, as it was called, Bible to Buber), although Paul Mosca taught Bible. We now have in CNERS specialists who teach Hebrew Bible (Sara Milstein), rabbinics (Gregg Gardner), Jewish mysticism and gender and Judaism (Daphna Arbel) and medieval and modern Jewish history (me). My colleagues are also offering innovative and exciting courses: Gregg will be giving a course on Jews and food. And, I know there are courses offered in other departments, such as courses on cultural responses to the Holocaust (central European studies) and Jewish literature in Canada (English).”

Menkis said that both UBC and the local Jewish community have been supportive of efforts over the last several decades to develop Jewish studies at the university. By way of examples with which he was personally involved, Menkis said, “When the library of Frank Talmage, a scholar of Jewish studies, became available, the university recognized that it already had a number of the titles and paid for 60 percent of the collection, while the community paid for 40 percent. The deal I arranged was that the duplicates should go to the Jewish community in the eventuality that there would be a Jewish public library, and it did become part of the early collection of the library.

“When I suggested that the university could do fundraising for a chair in Judaica,” he continued, “I proposed that it should be in Jewish law and ethics, because it meant teaching the texts that have deeply shaped Jewish culture and society, and have had an impact beyond the Jewish world. In conjunction with Phillip Chown of the development office and dean of arts Alan Tully, we approached the Diamond Foundation, who made a very generous donation. UBC also had to commit funds in order to fund it. As was discussed with the Diamonds, the chairholders must be excellent scholars who are willing to do some educational outreach into the community.

“On a smaller scale, Irv and Betty Nitkin have funded the Itta and Eliezer Zeisler Memorial Lecture, which brings in a Jewish studies scholar once every two years to deliver a lecture at the university and another in the community. I think you can see the pattern – I have been trying to build up Jewish studies on campus, but in ways that will also engage constructively with the Jewish community off campus.”

Though not involved in the campaigns to ensure that a course in Holocaust history is taught every year and to establish an annual lecture series named in memory of Rudolph Vrba, Menkis said, “The first was mostly from a donation by Sophie Waldman. I believe Phillip Chown, Robert Krell, Chris Friedrichs and John Conway were involved in either one or both of the campaigns. I do, however, sit on the Holocaust education committee of the faculty of arts and, when we fund visiting speakers, we try to get the word out beyond the university, so that members of the public can attend.”

Menkis himself has given numerous lectures to various groups, he has taught mini-courses for joint UBC-Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver programs, as well as other adult education programs, and has taken part in several public programming initiatives including Lost Worlds, the Best of Hebrew U and, with Ronnie Tessler, an online history of B.C. Jews. He recently completed a three-year stint on the Toronto-based National Task Force for Teaching the Holocaust and is currently on an advisory board to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is being built in Winnipeg.

Considering the future, Menkis said that the teaching of modern Hebrew language and cultures is integral to creating a strong Jewish studies presence. “There is so much remarkable Hebrew literature being produced now, and there is so much critical scholarship in Jewish studies appearing in Hebrew, that you cannot say that you have given a student the best training in Jewish studies if you do not offer modern Hebrew,” he explained. “I would also love to see courses in Yiddish language and cultures. It is impossible to understand the history of the Jews in eastern Europe and in the ‘New World’ without a knowledge of Yiddish.

“We also need to develop our library resources. We have scholars working and teaching in a wide range of fields, but the library acquisitions have not kept up with the field.

“UBC is a very high-ranking school in Canada and internationally – I would love to see UBC’s Jewish studies be well-respected on campus, off campus and internationally.”

About the value of Jewish adult education in general and Jewish cultural agencies specifically, Menkis said, “I know that a wide array of adult education courses are taught in religious and secular organizations in our city, and this is a good thing. I cannot, however, review all these excellent programs. I do, however, want to point out that we have organizations that are crucial for the cultural infrastructure of our community. The Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library has an excellent collection of books on a wide range of topics, and makes available videos and music.... We need to continue to support the Jewish Public Library to help it continue with its excellent work.

“Our community can be very proud of the work of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre,” he continued. “In terms of programming, and the exhibitions that it has mounted, other Canadian Jewish communities are learning from Vancouver, rather than the other way around. I have already made the full disclosure, i.e. that I worked on one of those exhibitions, but I can tell you that the current exhibition on interned refugees [“Enemy Aliens”: The Internment of Jewish Refugees in Canada, 1940-1943] and previous shows were sophisticated and based on original research. They are the proof that here in Vancouver we have the potential to create adult and sophisticated understandings of Jewish life, and present them with flair. The VHEC is very deserving of support from our community.”

Menkis also highlighted the importance of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. “Its role in the community has been undervalued,” he said. “You know, Jews have complained, with some justice, that Jewish culture and Jewish life was not given a lot of attention in the non-Jewish world. At the university, for example, there was little or no Jewish studies until the 1970s. Before then, the culture of the university incorporated the views of Christianity on the Jews and Judaism – that they are irrelevant (even ‘fossils’) after Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. So, there was silence about Jewish culture coming from the non-Jewish world.

“But silence has also been ‘produced’ by the Jewish community. We create silence if we do not do everything to get the documents of the past, preserve them and catalogue them to make them available to researchers of various ages. It often does not occur to people how valuable their materials can be. I have a friend who is an historian who told me, after the fact, that he threw away his old camp newsletters and photos – who would be interested? There are historians who know that camps have played a crucial role in childhood development and specifically in Jewish identity, as the museum showed in its excellent exhibition on summer camps! The records and the photographs and the education programs that use these materials are crucial for a sophisticated self-understanding, and for a sophisticated explanation of who we are to non-Jews.”

Menkis stressed the value of archival collections, noting those in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, as well as smaller ones elsewhere. They “have had a very important role in deepening our understanding of the Canadian Jewish past,” he said. “Vancouver is now the third-largest Jewish community in Canada, and we need to know how it’s become what it is.”

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