Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies

As Canada experiences a disturbing surge of popular antisemitism, what responsibility do arts organizations—and the arts in general—have in championing Jewish culture, fostering inclusivity, and building bridges across communal lines? In this episode of Tête-à-tête, host Jonathan Slater is joined by curator and writer Evelyn Tauben, founder of the Toronto-based arts organization FENTSTER, for a conversation about the challenges that Jewish artists in Canada face as they navigate an industry that has imposed barriers to entry since October 7, as well as the many opportunities that still exist for productive engagement, solidarity across racial and religious lines, and reconciliation. They focus on Evelyn's latest project, SHVILIM ("paths," in Hebrew), a provincially funded initiative to promote Jewish creativity in Ontario's arts landscape. This conversation was recorded live at the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies' 2026 Annual Conference on May 31, at York University's Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies. Click here to learn more about SHVILIM and to explore the Bridging Worlds resources on understanding antisemitism in French and English. Click here to read a summary of SHVILIM's work with the Ontario Arts Council and their recommendations for the arts sector. This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman. We thank the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for their generous support of this episode. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The ACJS is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates about the ACJS, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at acjs@yorku.ca.

Theresa Tova, the Paris-born, Calgary-raised actor, singer, and playwright, is synonymous with the Canadian Jewish musical stage. Creator of the award-winning Holocaust-themed musical Still the Night, one-third of the globe-trotting sensation The Three Yiddish Divas, and now starring as Yente in the first-ever Canadian production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, Theresa joins the show for a wide-ranging conversation about her life, career, and the relationship between identity, memoir, and performance. Catch Theresa in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, running May 25–June 2, 2026, at Toronto's Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company! This episode features snippets of Theresa's songs "Under Your White Starry Heaven," "Telling Stories," and "Night & Day," which you can listen to in full in the foregoing links! You can find all of Theresa's albums here. And don't forget to check out the Canadian Jewish Life Writing Project, a new initiative to capture personal narratives about the Canadian Jewish experience! This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at acjs@yorku.ca.

In the second half of the twentieth century, approximately twenty thousand Jews emigrated from North Africa to Canada. Most of them were from Morocco, and most settled in and around Montreal. Yolande Cohen, a historian at the Université du Québec à Montréal and herself a Moroccan Jewish immigrant to Canada (via France), has spent much of her career collecting and analyzing narratives of this migration—its motivations, its traumas, its memories. Cohen is the author of two new books, Moroccan Jews in France and Canada, and Migrations postcoloniales des Juifs du Maroc: Vers le Canada et la France, both published in 2025, and she joins the show to discuss not only the difficult histories she traces in her work but also the ways in which those histories have been received, challenged, and often ignored by Canada's Moroccan Jewish community. You can learn more about Cohen's personal journey in a bilingual essay she wrote for Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes back in 2024. And don't forget to check out the ACJS's new digital archive of the Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal (1977-1988), also mentioned in this episode! This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for its newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at acjs@yorku.ca.

In 2025, the Azrieli Foundation's landmark Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program (HSMP) celebrated its twentieth year in existence. To mark the occasion, the journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes brought together six scholars, along with HSMP managing editor Arielle Berger, for a robust conversation that reflects on the educational, cultural, and moral legacy of the program. On this episode of Tête-à-tête, host Jonathan Slater sits down with two of those scholars, Carson Phillips and Sara R. Horowitz, for a discussion about their deep involvement with the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program over the years, and how the HSMP captures the dynamic interplay between survivor testimony, translation practices, Holocaust education, and public memory in the Canadian context. This episode was produced and edited by Theadora Draper. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates about the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, sign up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at acjs@yorku.ca.

Over the past couple of years, no scholar has tried to understand what makes Canadian Jews tick with greater energy and enthusiasm than the sociologist Robert Brym. Since publishing his groundbreaking post-October 7 report, "Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions," in the spring of 2024, Brym has gone on to produce similarly pioneering research on Jewish intermarriage and continuity; visible, Indigenous, and gender minorities within Canadian Jewry; and antisemitism in Ontario's K-12 school system, among other topics. Brym's fascination with the sociology of Canadian Jewry dates back decades, and for his larger body of work the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies awarded him its Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award in 2025. In this episode, Brym reflects on his recent findings with host Jonathan Slater while looking ahead to even more vital contributions, including a study on Jewish voting patterns in the 2025 Canadian federal election, coming out in the months ahead. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at acjs@yorku.ca.

"If you have not been to Łódź you cannot imagine its texture, the strange uniqueness of its streetscape...." In this episode we speak with Norman Ravvin, writer, literary scholar, Concordia University professor, and contributor to the fall 2024 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. Norm discusses with host Jonathan Slater his essay, "City, Writer, Conference: A Chava Rosenfarb Conference in Łódź, Poland, October 2023," a moving on-the-ground report from Łódź, where he attended a centennial conference devoted to the Canadian Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb, who was born in the city. Click here to read Norm's essay. The entire volume is free to read on our website. This episode was produced and edited by Michelle Chang. Original music is by J. K. Bradley. Our executive producers are Joshua Tapper and David Koffman. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at cjeditor@yorku.ca.

Welcome to Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies, a new podcast from the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies. Join host Jonathan Slater, an emeritus professor of communications based in Montreal, each month for incisive and thought-provoking conversations with scholars, journalists, curators, and more, whose work fills the pages of the ACJS's flagship journal, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes. Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work and how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. Credits: Host: Jonathan Slater Producer/Editor: Michelle Chang Music: J. K. Bradley Executive Producers: Joshua Tapper and David S. Koffman