Book Reviews
Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite
Mendelson, Alan. Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite. Toronto: Robin Brass Studio, 2008. 450 pp., illus. $29.95.
Alan Mendelson’s new book, Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite, is an intellectual history of the relationship between Canadian Jews, a specific set of Canadian elite, and the “genteel anti-Semitism” that came between them. The book revolves around George Parkin Grant (November 13, 1918—September 27, 1988), his philosophical and familial ancestors, and his pantheon of philosophical influences. Grant was a Canadian intellectual and political philosopher who is sometimes referred to as the theoretician behind Canadian Red Toryism, as is exemplified in his most renowned and influential work, Lament for a Nation.
Mendelson begins the book with an inspection of Anglo (British, Canadian and American) intellectual Goldwin Smith, now a well-documented anti-Semite. Mendelson then attempts to establish a tradition of genteel anti-Semitism in the Canadian elite moving from Smith through Henri Bourassa and Mackenzie King to Grant’s relatives, George Monro Grant, George Robert Parkin, and Vincent Massey, then finally down to George Parkin Grant himself. This genteel anti-Semitism—opposed to “gutter” anti-Semitism—is more nuanced and complex than its populist manifestation. Mendelson also successfully argues that genteel anti-Semitism is more insidious, as it was intellectually justified and its proponents had more political and social clout. Genteel anti-Semitism’s complexity is often manifested in a love-hate relationship. Mackenzie King’s diary offers a good example. In one instance, it self-righteously boasts of King walking an old Jewish man home on an icy Ottawa evening. Another example of genteel anti-Semitism’s complex nature is Grant’s relationship with author Matt Cohen for whom he arranged a position at McMaster University, only to later cause his resignation with anti-Semetic comments.
One of Mendelson’s greatest contributions to the intellectual history of Canadian anti-Semitism is identifying the source of this particular strain of genteel anti-Semitism; he understands its foundation to be the related doctrines of Christian triumphalism and supersessionism. Christian triumphalism has long been documented by post-modernists as a root cause of the evils of colonialism. Proponents of christian triumphalism claim that Christianity is the superlative religion and must therefore triumph over all others. Supersessionism argues that Christianity’s universalist and superior doctrine superseded Judaism’s tribalistic and inferior nature, therefore rendering modern Judaism an obsolete and “fossilised religion.”
A theme that resurfaces throughout Mendelson’s thesis but remains unexplored is the expression of a more racially motivated anti-Semitism. This occurs, for instance, in the discussion of Goldwin Smith’s hatred of Benjamin Disraeli’s Semitic attributes (despite being baptized at birth, Smith felt he was still racially Jewish), or of King’s belief in the dangerous racial characteristics of potential Jewish immigrants. Mendelson finally deals with this problem in two paragraphs of his epilogue claiming that ascription of negative racial stereotypes to a separate group is a natural consequence of Othering. However, this reveals a large gap in Mendelson’s argument that demands further study. Generally speaking, one can categorize the evolution of anti-Semitism as beginning with judeophobia—a religious-based hatred (ie. the argument that Jews are Christ-killers or that of Blood Libel). It then evolved, with the advent of modernity, into a racially and nationalistically motivated hatred, resulting in the word anti-Semitism (being against the Semitic race). Using this construct, the Canadian elites’ genteel anti-Semitism seems to be a hybrid of the two. While, by most accounts, their genteel anti-Semitism was largely religiously motivated, their Christian triumphalism and supersessionism were borrowed from modern concepts such as Hegelian teleological history and Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest. Furthermore, as the above disparity in Mendelson’s thesis demonstrates, this genteel anti-Semitism was influenced by the “racial science” rhetoric of gutter anti-Semitism, which was rampant in this period.
Although it is not a book for laymen due to its philosophical “name-dropping,” this book is recommended to anyone interested in Jewish studies or Canadian history. Mendelson’s meticulous use of primary sources, including private letters, diaries, political cartoons and never- before-published materials, is impressive from an historical researcher’s point of view. Moreover, Exiles from Nowhere’s significance cannot be understated. The first two-thirds of the book may be viewed as a companion to Irving Abella and Harold Troper’s seminal None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948. Finally, as Mendelson also argues, this book has cautionary lessons for today in its parallels with the prevalence of Islamophobia.
Jonathan Grossman
At Odds in the World: Essays on Jewish Canadian Women Writers
Panofsky, Ruth. At Odds in the World: Essays on Jewish Canadian Women Writers. Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2008. 117 pp. $25.95
It is often through investigation of the very specific that one can derive more universal and over-arching meanings. The first of its kind, Ruth Panofsky’s exploration of Jewish Canadian women writers, At Odds in the World, creates a taxonomy of authors each fighting to make meaning out of marginalised experiences. However, although she connects these writers in terms of gender and ethnic identity, her work betrays that what they have in common is precisely what makes them so different from one another.
With originality and an intuitive understanding characteristic of the entire work, the collection commences with a critical study of Miriam Waddington’s short fiction. Though Waddington is best known as a poet, it is nonetheless surprising that Panofsky’s paper is the first to examine her short stories and the passionate female characters found within them. At Odds in the World follows with an overview of Helen Weinzweig’s oeuvre that has been, for the most part, unjustly ignored by literary scholarship. Other articles found in the collection include a treatment of the alienation, dejection, and dissatisfaction of Canadian women in Nora Gold’s short stories; a reproduction of Panofsky’s highly influential 1992 feminist reading of Adele Wiseman’s work, which suggests that the triumph of the heroine of her second novel, Crackpot, is an expiation for the titular sacrifice of a female character in the first; and, a groundbreaking look at Jewish prostitution—a subject that has been all but denied in history books—in the fiction of Lilian Nattel and Adele Wiseman. As a concluding chapter, the memoirs of Fredelle Bruser Maynard and her daughter Joyce Maynard are examined through the lens of their relationship; Panofsky considers how they were not only mother and daughter, but also mentor and apprentice. This approach to their writing is indicative of how Panofsky exclusively poses questions that have yet to be asked, while insisting that the reader look either for the first time or completely afresh at the divergent ways that women experience being Canadian Jews.
The depth and the breadth of the fascinating selection of writing examined in Ruth Panofsky’s At Odds in the World indeed demonstrates that Jewish Canadian women writers differ as much as they compare. By discussing poets, novelists, and autobiographers writing between 1956 and 2004, Panofsky reveals how each author was faced with her own generational obstacles and personal demons that, when translated into writing, nevertheless engage with more collective concerns such as a woman’s role in the family, female sensuality, and finding a place for women within religion. This book is highly accessible and, with its clear writing and lucid argumentation, also serves as an excellent introduction to many of the themes inherent to Canadian Jewish Studies as a whole. Panofsky refuses to read into the writing a simple catalogue of grievances and instead discovers a spectrum of women’s issues and Jewish questions. In reviewing writers who carved out individuality amidst patriarchal forces insisting that there is one way to be a woman, and imperial forces averring that there is one way to be a Canadian, At Odds in the World deftly exposes how the attempt to reconcile multiple identities is what makes us all human.
Julie Spergel