Jewish Studies: Literature

| A.M. Klein | Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry | TRIBUTE TO A.M. KLEINFiction |

A.M. Klein, is considered one of Canada's major twentieth-century poets. Over the years his work has attracted a growing devoted readership. His influence continues to be felt, amplified by the tragedy of his self-imposed prolonged silence and untimely death. In celebration of his important contribution to Canadian literature, editors Seymour Mayne and B. Glen Rotchin brought together an anthology of poetic tributes which reflects Klein’s multifaceted legacy. These poems are excerpted from A Rich Garland: Poems for A.M. Klein, edited by Seymour Mayne and B. Glen Rotchin.

Leonard Cohen

To a Teacher

Hurt once and for all into silence.
A long pain ending without a song to prove it.

Who could stand beside you so close to Eden,
when you glinted in every eye the held-high razor,
shivering every ram and son?

And now the silent looney-bin,
where the shadows live in the rafters
like day-weary bats,
until the turning mind, a radar signal,
lures them to exaggerate mountain-size
on the white stone wall
your tiny limp.

How can I leave you in such a house?
Are there no more saints and wizards
to praise their ways with pupils,
no more evil to stun with the slap
of a wet red tongue?

Did you confuse the Messiah in a mirror
and rest because he had finally come?

Let me cry Help beside you, Teacher.
I have entered under this dark roof
as fearlessly as an honoured son
enters his father's house.

Copyright Leonard Cohen

JEWISH CANADIAN ANTHOLOGY

Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry.
Eds. Seymour Mayne and B. Glen Rotchin.

Beginning with King David, Jerusalem has enchanted and inspired Jewish poets through the ages. Perhaps due to Canada's multicultural heritage, Jewish Canadian poets writing in English have maintained and expressed close ties to Jerusalem in their poems. Over a period of approximately seventy-five years, these poets have produced a unique body of work about the city, unparalleled in scope and volume in any other English-speaking country.

Including: Leonard Cohen, Hyman Edelstein, Marvyne
Jenoff, A.M. Klein, Sehl Krakofsky, Irving Layton, Daniel Lowe, Seymour Mayne, Sharon H. Nelson, Carol Rose, B. Glen Rotchin, Lazar Sarna, Stephen Schecter, Kenneth Sherman, Steve Smith, David Solway, Miriam Waddington, David Weisstub, Shulamis Yelin.

Irving Layton

Next Year, In Jerusalem

There is evil
and men are given over wholly
to pride,
pitiless in their reach
for power and glory

Yet Anatoli Shcharansky
didn't betray his comrades
and Ginzburg
ill and defenceless
defied the Soviet empire

Lonely opposing martyrs
in the desolation of their cities
the besotted slavemasters
will recall your words
the falmes carrying on their backs
the furious contempt of Isaiah
Shrivelling their insolence
into black cinders

I kiss your hands;
across steppes and barbed wire
send you my heartfelt greetings

Next year, in Jerusalem!

Copyright Irving Layton

FICTION

When Paupers Dance, [Autobiographical Novel] by Szloma Renglich. Translated from the Yiddish by Zigmund Jampel. Winner, 1989 Toronto Jewish Fiction Prize

Szloma Renglich at age 17, Warsaw, Poland, 1929.

When Paupers Dance is set in the poorest Jewish ghettos of Lublin and Warsaw from 1912 to 1928. A spirited boy, whose father vanished in World War I, confronts the mysterious disappearance of his mother when he is twelve years old. Left with a younger sister and an elderly grandmother to take care for, the boy at that tender age becomes a man. Finally, tortured by the loss of his mother, he stets out at fifteen to search for her and attempts to rescue her from a terrible fate. When Paupers Dance is a powerful and poignant story of a boy’s unique coming-of-age in pre-World War II Poland.

About the Author

Szloma Renglich is a survivor of the Holocaust. He escaped to Russia in 1939, and after the war returned to Poland. He lived there with his wife and five children until 1958. In that year, as he was preparing to emigrate to Israel, Renglich discovered that his sister had also survived the war and was living in Canada. He immediately changed plans and was soon reunited with her in Montreal, where he resettled with his family. Szloma Renglich has earned his living as a presser, tailor, and fur finisher. The sequel to When Paupers Dance, continuing from 1929 to the present, is called In the Heart of Warsaw.

FICTION

Corner of Nalefky and Gensha, Warsaw,
Poland, 1937

In the Heart of Warsaw [Autobiographical Novel/Translation] by Szloma Renglich. Translated from the Yiddish by Zigmund Jampel. Winner, 1994 Toronto Jewish Fiction Prize.

In 1928 a young man has just discovered the devastating truth of his mother’s disappearance four years earlier. So begins a dramatic and emotional tale of one man’s life: trade union strikes in Poland before the war, spring nights in Warsaw where he finds love, the arduous trek in the winter of 1942 through Russia in search of a father who had disappeared in World War I, and their bittersweet reunion.

In the Heart of Warsaw is the long-awaited sequel to When Paupers Dance, Renglich’s poignant coming-of-age story set in the ghettos of Lublin and Warsaw before World War II.

FICTION

The Rent Collector [Novel] by B. Glen Rotchin
Finalist, 2005 Amazon.ca / Books in Canada First Novel Award

Gershon Stein, a 36-year-old Orthodox Jew, collects rent in a large industrial building in the heart of Montreal's needletrade. He struggles to reconcile his relationship with his ailing Holocaust-survivor father, find balance in his family life, and match wits with the array of colourful tenants who occupy building.If there is one thing Gershon knows, it's that life is rented and everyone has a debt to pay: to their landlord, their family, their community, and, most of all, to their soul.

"A genuine pleasure, a first novel of insight and tenderness."
--Montreal Gazette

List of books featured on this page:

A Rich Garland: Poems for A.M. Klein. Seymour Mayne and B. Glen Rotchin, Eds. Winner, 2000 Canadian Jewish Book Awards, and the Henry Fuerstenberg / Betty and Morris Aaron Prize.

In the Heart of Warsaw [Autobiographical Novel/Translation] by Szloma Renglich. Translated from the Yiddish by Zigmund Jampel. Winner, 1994 Toronto Jewish Fiction Prize.

Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry. Edited by Seymour Mayne and Glen Rotchin. Winner, 1997 Canadian Jewish Book Awards; Award for Canadian Jewish History; & the Louis L. Lockshin Memorial Award.

The Rent Collector [Novel] by B. Glen Rotchin
Finalist, 2005 Amazon.ca / Books in Canada First Novel Award

When Paupers Dance, [Autobiographical Novel] by Szloma Renglich. Translated from the Yiddish by Zigmund Jampel.Winner, 1989 Toronto Jewish Fiction Prize.