APRIL 2025
der zamler
JPL’S NEWSLETTER FOR ALL THINGS
ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
Chag Pesach Sameach!
Unzer Sztyme Title Page, Issue 9, April 15, 1946, featuring a Pesach Prayer. Courtesy of the JPL Archives, Paul Trepman Fonds, ID: 1069_[33]_9.
We are wishing you all a happy and healthy holiday this year…
…and thank you for joining us! In the past few weeks, our department has brought four events to life, and we’re so thankful to the hundreds of people who’ve joined us locally and remotely. What a treat to see so many long term projects come to fruition and have the opportunity to share them with you. Keep scrolling for information about our new exhibitions, upcoming events, and more details about our successful March and April events.
Rivka Augenfeld at our recent Unzer Sztyme event at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts, April 1, 2025.
upcoming event
Event poster for Etz Chaim Event for Blue Metropolis 2025. Courtesy of Blue Metropolis Foundation.
For the 2025 Blue Metropolis Annual Festival:
Etz Chaim, Kabbalistic Divinity Maps and Golems: The Tree of Life in Safed, Prague, and Montreal
Sunday, April 27, 2025
1:00 - 2:30pm EST
Hôtel10 - Garden Room (10 Sherbrooke Street W, Montreal, QC)
$10 | In-Person | Registration required | Event in English
In 2013, the Jewish Public Library Archives received an unusual donation: an ilan, a kabbalistic Tree of life (Etz Chaim), that is an arboreal diagram the early kabbalists used in both meditative and mystical practices. It was owned by Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg, and donated by Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg and his brother Barry, great-nephews of the famous Montreal rabbi, Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg who lived in the city between 1919-1935. Rosenberg was a Hasid, a kabbalist, a holistic doctor, scribe, the first translator of the Zohar from Aramaic into Hebrew, and the maternal grandfather of Mordecai Richler. The Montreal Jewish Public Library Ilan is the only artefact of its kind in Canada. Exceptionally authorized to leave the JPL Archives, the Ilan, or Rosenberg Rotulus (a rotulus is a scroll that unrolls vertically) will be shown to the public. The narrative backdrops to the parchment, the golem stories and Rosenberg’s medical manuscripts will be recounted in a session offered by Eddie Paul, Associate Director of Special Collections at the Jewish Public Library. Q&A will follow.
FOR THE RECORD:
A BLOG ABOUT THE WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE, AND HOW (OF ARCHIVING)
Caption reads: “Four of the girls chosen for Montreal All-Stars Basketball Team in August, 1934. Millie Lack, Ida Wiseberg [Bly], Millie Leather, Betty Charles”. Courtesy of the JPL Archives, Ida Bly Fonds, ID: 1482_[1]_61.
What were women’s sports like in Montreal 100 years ago?
Winter 2025 Intern Kat Boechler has been processing the Ida Bly Fonds this semester and shares with us what can be learned from Bly’s careers in basketball and softball in the 1930s and 1940s.
news from the stacks
Presentations during the recent ALEPH a quinz ans event at the Gelber Conference Centre. Seated on stage are Anne-Elaine Cliche and Sonia Sarah Lipsyc.
In the last month, the JPL Archives have hosted several events, including two of our most ambitious productions since we’ve been a team of five. First, there was ALEPH a quinze ans, a celebration of the ALEPH educational program that Sonia Sarah Lipsyc ran for fifteen years through the CSUQ. Colleagues, friends and family came together to celebrate Sonia Sarah’s amazing contributions to French-language Jewish education in Montreal. It was a night to remember, with good food, musical interludes, and impactful speeches.
Eddie Paul carried out two events: first, a rare books workshop for the membership of the ABQLA (l’Association des bibiothécaires de Québec - Quebec Library Association) in the beautiful Colgate Room of McGill’s Rare Books department. Then a week later, online for our international audiences, he interviewed Hannah Pollin-Galay about her newest book Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish. Through examples of her favourite words, and sharing stories of how she mirrored her writing practice to those of the writers she studied, Pollin-Galay brought the richness of this book to life. We’ve put the discussion on our YouTube channel for your viewing pleasure.
From left to right, Aaron Krishtalka, Pierre Anctil, and Benya Villani discussing translation and Jewish identity at the recent Unzer Sztyme event at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts.
Finally, after more than a year in the works, we brought Unzer Sztyme: Our Voice After the Unimaginable to life in collaboration with our neighbours the Montreal Holocaust Museum at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts. It was an evening of nourishing discussions, emotional Yiddish readings, historical context and sharing of memories. Thank you to all those who joined us at the Segal and on Zoom to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the beginnings of the Unzer Sztyme publication, and celebrate the ongoing translation efforts making it accessible to broader audiences. If you want to experience it again, or you weren’t able to make it, the YouTube video is available below!
Our three practicum students finish their semesters with us this week, and we’re happy with what they’ve managed to accomplish. Sharon created a matrix of funding opportunities for the future of the JPL Archives; a document worth more than gold! Kat lovingly processed and described the Ida Bly Fonds, which you can read more about in her blog post below. Georgia listened to and digitized hours of interviews with Jewish Montrealers that will soon be available to listen to as part of our Oral History Collection. Thank you for all your hard work this year and best of luck post-graduation!
new exhibitionS
Close-up of Our Voice After the Unimaginable exhibition on now across from circulation at the Jewish Public Library.
IN COLLABORATION WITH THE
MONTREAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM:
our voice after the unimaginable
APRIL 1, 2025 - JULY 1, 2025
In-House & Virtual Exhibition Launch
Jewish Public Library, across from circulation desk
In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen and as part of the Paul and Babey Trepman memorial lecture series, the Jewish Public Library Archives and the Montreal Holocaust Museum are pleased to co-present this exhibit. We invite you to learn about the period post-Liberation, and to discover how survivors took to documenting their experiences as a form of healing.
recollections with the jpl podcast
Cover art for recollections with the JPL.
Der zamler is a Yiddish term meaning “the collector” and is related to the verb zamlen, which means “to gather.” In using this name, we join a long history of people dedicated to gathering and preserving Jewish culture around the world. A heartfelt thank-you goes to Sam Bick for the initial idea and to Anna Fishman Gonshor for providing the cultural context.
All non-archival photography, unless otherwise credited, by staff of the JPL Archives.
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