DECEMBER 2025
der zamler
JPL’S ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS NEWSLETTER
Attendees looking at poster facsimiles from the private collection of Jerry Faivish, on view during the Can Posters Kill? event on December 2, 2025.
Happy Chanukah
Wishing everyone peace and light this holiday season.
Thank you to everyone who attended our Can Posters Kill? event last week! It was great to learn more about Jerry Faivish’s poster collection, and the ways that propaganda worked under the Nazi regime and continues to promote xenophobia today.
This weekend, the JPL has the last event of 2025: our Youth Chanukah Party! Our Youth Archives Coordinator has been working hard with our young (and young at heart) patrons to create a mural based on an archival photograph. Learn more about the initiative in this month’s blog post below.
Please note that the Archives are closed from December 15, 2025 to January 4, 2025. We look forward to hosting researchers again in January.
Upcoming Events
Chanukah Special:
JPL Collage Club in the Archives
Sunday, December 14, 2025, 2pm-3:30pm
Jewish Public Library Archives (basement level)
Free, registration required | Open to Youth aged 11-25
Announcing a very special Chanukah-themed Collage Club in the Archives! Join Ezell for a screening of Home Alone and participate in a special candle-making workshop. Create and decorate your own candle to bring home!
Current exhibition
The Life and Activism of Léa Roback
November 1, 2025 - February 1 2026
Jewish Public Library, across from circulation desk
Léa Roback (1903-2000) was born in Montréal to a Jewish family of Polish origin. Raised in Beauport, Québec, she attended university in Grenoble and Berlin in the late 1920s. In Germany, Nazism was on the rise and Roback became keenly politicized; she joined demonstrations with students and trade unionists, and became part of the communist movement that spearheaded the anti-fascist struggle.
Back in Montreal as of 1932, Roback was committed to workers’ rights and women’s rights, where her gift of languages played a pivotal role in trade union success. Later in her life, her support grew to many other causes, including the intersections of where these causes overlap. She was a consistent voice against police violence, and was staunchly anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid. She was an abortion and peace activist who fought for the rights of visible minorities, including the land rights of Indigenous communities.
The Life and Activism of Léa Roback, exhibition on now across from circulation at the Jewish Public Library.
Léa Roback Tote Bags: limited edition
We’ve made our first batch of Archives merch! Donations of $20 or more are eligible for our limited edition Léa Roback tote bag, available in blue and maroon. Be sure to visit circulation while supplies last!
Youth Workbook
The Norman Berman Children's Library has put on another exhibition of their own for Jewish Book Month for the 2025 Fall/Winter Season! Our second instalment of the workbook (French | English) offers similar activities, however, you may notice the answer page absent--youth are encouraged to turn in their workbook for a chance to win a Léa Roback tote bag in honour of the Archives' newest in-house exhibition, The Life and Activism of Léa Roback.
Team Spirit: Library Exhibition Review
Did you see the Ida Bly exhibition this summer? It has been selected by the ARLIS/NA Library Exhibition Review for their 2026 issue. If you would like to review the exhibition, please fill out the form before December 12, 2025.
FOR THE RECORD:
A monthly blog by the JPL Archives
The recently completed Chanukah window mural coloured in by young JPL patrons, fall 2025.
How an archival photo project is bringing colour and life to our Youth Space
For the last few years, our archives team has had two staff tasked with Archival Outreach. Since last March, one of them has been specifically working to introduce younger patrons in age-appropriate ways to Jewish Montreal history and our Archives. Learn more about what they’ve learned in this process at the link below!
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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Jewish Public Library
5151 Chemin de la Cote-Sainte-Catherine
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Canada