On Canadian Jews and EDI, Fertility, and Queer Fiction • Antisemitism and the Arts • Annual Conference Wrap
Your June/July 2026 newsletter from the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies
Hello, and welcome to the June/July 2026 edition of the ACJS newsletter,
The early summer months routinely bring contented exhalation for us here at the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies. Our annual conference has come and gone and the spring volume of our scholarly journal, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, is out in the world, reaching eyeballs and (we hope) stirring up conversation. In mid-June, we also concluded the first season of our podcast, Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies, with an episode—featuring curator Evelyn Tauben, about a new initiative to address antisemitism through the arts—recorded live at the aforementioned conference. We’ve got more on all of that below!
Although summer has just set in, we can’t resist the temptation to look excitedly at the months ahead. Stay tuned for more details about our Speakers Bureau, coming this autumn; a suite of virtual courses on topics in Canadian Jewish history and culture, taught by experts in the field and beginning in early 2027; a multi-faceted collaboration with the Centre for Jewish Studies at Dalhousie University, in Halifax; and much, much more (including a new partnership with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation). Oh, and we’re giving our website a summer makeover that we can’t wait to reveal.
In the meantime, we’re hiring! We’re seeking a finance manager to join our leadership team beginning September 2026. If you have experience in bookkeeping or financial management and are interested in supporting our mission of promoting knowledge about the Canadian Jewish experience, we’d love to hear from you.
And as ever, we encourage you to consider submitting a short autobiographical essay to our ongoing Canadian Jewish Life Writing Project, which was just covered in The Canadian Jewish News.
If you’re moved this summer to help us sustain and grow our activities, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. To learn more about how your contribution will help support our efforts to bring more Jewish CanCon to broader audiences, shoot me an email at jtapper@yorku.ca.
Thank you for being part of our community,
—Joshua Tapper, executive director, ACJS
Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes: The Spring 2026 Volume
The spring 2026 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes is now available, online and in print. In this volume:
Lilach Marom marshals data from a national survey, as well as interviews, to show how Jewish identity and antisemitism have been marginalized in the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion policies and practices of universities in Canada.
Rachel Margolis analyzes fertility demographics and their relationship with religiosity among Canada’s Jews as reflected in the three most recent federal censuses (2001, 2011, and 2021). She finds that Jews who identify as Jewish by religion have significantly higher fertility rates than Jews who don’t, as do Jews who are immigrants, rather than those born in Canada.
Pierre Anctil uses the infamous Plamondon Libel Case and its 1913–1914 trials in Quebec City as a portal to better understand the intellectual sources of anti-Judaism that pervaded Catholic Quebec elites and to distinguish it from the intellectual trends swirling in Anglophone Canada around the same time.
Shlomo Gleibman explores perennial questions about migration, identify, diversity, and multiculturalism through a study of representations of queerness in literary work by David Bezmozgis, Brian Stein, and K. David Brody.
Ellen Tulchinsky, Laura Tulchinsky, and Heather Home dive into the archives of Ellen and Laura’s father, the late, great Canadian Jewish historian Gerald Tulchinsky, and unearth letters (one of which graces the volume’s cover) and photographs from a transformative year Jerry spent adventuring in Israel in 1952–1953.
Hongfei Liang translates two newspaper articles from Chinese to English detailing efforts to build connections between Chinese and Jewish communities in Vancouver in the early 2000s. (Learn more about Hongfei’s work in our January 2026 newsletter.)
We’re particularly pleased to introduce the Canadian Jewish Barometer, a new, periodic section of the journal devoted to major survey work conducted by the sociologist Robert Brym. In the Barometer’s 2026 edition, “Pressures on Canadian Jewish and their Responses,” Brym and co-author Rhonda Lenton draw on groundbreaking data that show how antisemitism has evolved in Canada since early 2024 and describe how these changes have affected Canada’s Jews. One of the study’s principal findings: non-Jewish Canadians’ attitudes toward Jews and Israel have become significantly more negative over the past two years.
We put together a handy infographic that breaks down some of the study’s key findings.
As ever, CJS / Éjc is free to read online. We hope you’ll consider sharing with friends, colleagues, and family members. And if you’d like to read the volume in print, copies are available for purchase on Amazon for just $17.
Episode 14 of Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies: Addressing Antisemitism in and through the Arts, with Evelyn Tauben
What responsibility to arts organizations—and the arts in general—have in championing Jewish culture, fostering inclusivity, and building bridges across communal lines?
Tête-à-tête host Jonathan Slater is joined by curator Evelyn Tauben, founder of the Toronto-based Jewish arts organization FENTSTER, for a conversation about challenges that Jews in the arts in Canada have faced in recent years, as well as the many opportunities that exist for productive engagement, solidarity, and reconciliation. They focus on Evelyn’s latest project, SHVILIM (“paths,” in Hebrew), a provincially funded initiative celebrating Jewish creativity in Ontario’s arts landscape. Jonathan and Evelyn chat about how SHVILIM is charting a new approach to educating about antisemitism through a holistic lens, and why its team is advocating for non-punitive solutions in the arts and beyond.
You can find episode 14 of Tête-à-tête on our website or wherever you listen to podcasts—now including YouTube. And don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the show.
This episode is the last of season 1! Tête-à-tête will be back in September for a second season, with fascinating conversations about topics ranging from Canadian Jewish foodways to Canadian anti-hate legislation to Canadian Jewish archival practices, and so much more.
ACJS 2026 Annual Conference Roundup (May 31-June 2)
The episode of Tête-à-tête featuring Evelyn Tauben was recorded live on May 31 to kick-off the ACJS’s 2026 conference at York University, just one of several banner events highlighting our annual gathering of scholars, students, artists, archivists, museum professionals, and community leaders. It was, simply put, a buzzing affair as more than two hundred guests joined us at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies for three days of learning and (educational!) entertainment.
In addition to the podcast taping, writer Gary Barwin and publishing professional Cynthia Good sat down with Parchment editor-in-chief Orly Zebak for a probing conversation about the literary dimensions of the contemporary Canadian Jewish experience, capped off by a reading from the spring 2026 volume of Parchment by contributor Hannah Warry-Smith. Conference attendees were also treated to a thought-provoking workshop on applications of AI technology to Canadian Jewish studies, and a galvanizing roundtable reflecting on the past, present, and future of Canadian Jewish studies, featuring Richard Menkis, Ruth Panofsky, Janice Rosen, and Randal Schnoor.
Beyond that, the conference featured fifty-five presenters from six provinces and four countries sharing new research across a vast array of subject matter, including gender identities in Orthodox Judaism, histories of inclusion and exclusion in Jewish Toronto, Holocaust education and survivor activism, Canadian Zionism and non-Zionism, Jewish women in pre-Confederation Canada, and much more.
The conference was also an occasion to present the 2026 Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award to Sheldon and Judy Godfrey, whose scholarship and work in historical preservation, public education, and community leadership have made an extraordinary contribution to the study and understanding of Jewish life in Canada. The Godfreys’ landmark publication, Search Out the Land: The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740–1867, remains one of the most important studies of early Canadian Jewish history.
Planning for our 2027 conference is already underway—stay tuned for our location announcement and further details in the months ahead!
Support Our Work
At the ACJS we strive to foster awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the Jewish experience in Canada across time and space. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation and join us in creating opportunities for future generations to discover the history and culture of Jews in Canada.
If you’d like to learn more about how your contribution can support the ACJS, please reach out to Joshua Tapper, executive director, at jtapper@yorku.ca.
Stay in touch!
Questions? Comments? Want to collaborate, or just want to say hi? Please don’t hesitate to email us at acjs@yorku.ca. You can also join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn!
