Seligman Swartzman Gillis Sandman Joffe Yachad Lederman Fleishman

Levi, Rabbi S. Gershon. Breaking New Ground: The Struggle for a Jewish Chaplaincy in Canada. Edited by David Golinkin. Montreal: National Archives Canadian Jewish Congress, 1994. 101pp. This special issue of Canadian Jewish Archives deals with an important chapter in the history of the war effort of the Canadian Jewish community during the cataclysmic world conflict against Nazi Germany’s Festung Europa. This is the story of how the author, who was the first Jewish chaplain to the Canadian forces in World War II, organized and developed his far-flung ministry to Jewish servicemen. The book begins however with an account of the bureaucratic problems and intra-communal conflict which hindered the appointment of the first Jewish chaplain. Rabbi Levi’s story reaches a climax with several moving episodes of the role of Canadian Jewish chaplains during the liberation of Europe, particularly the first Passover Seders conducted in freedom. Some Seders took place right at the front-line during the continuing conflict. These episodes are found in the appendices. Before undertaking this review I was not unfamiliar with the name of S. Gershon Levi and of his service as a war-time chaplain. But it was only on reading the introduction, by David Golinkin, that I learned the extent of Rabbi Levi’s rabbinic/scholarly and literary career. It was a revelation to discover that he had translated several important works by noted Jewish writers such as Chaim Grade, Haim Hazzaz and Gedaliah Alon. Prof. Golinkin is to be commended for bringing to posthumous fruition Rabbi Levi’s last work, the memoir of his five years in the Canadian military chaplaincy; also for enlarging on Rabbi Levi’s memoir with the appendices. It is particularly gratifying that he was able to translate from the Yiddish the interviews of I. Medres with Rabbi Samuel Cass, originally published in the Kanader Adler. The book includes merited tributes to Rabbi Levi by Rabbi Dr. Isaac B. Rose of Jerusalem and by Lady Elsie Janner of London (England). In particular Rabbi Rose stresses the role of the Jewish chaplaincy, created by Rabbi Levi, in helping the She’erit ha-Peletah, the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. Janice Rosen, the Congress archivist in Montreal, is quite correct in her preface in saying that the chaplaincy story is a Canadian Jewish Congress story as well as another chapter in the war years record of Canadian Jewry. The book explains the significant role of the Congress in gaining approval for the appointment of Jewish military chaplains. I also agree that Gershon Levi is a worthy guest author for the Canadian Jewish Archives. It is to be hoped that this will be a precedent for publication of other worthy contributions to Canadian Jewish history. The Canadian Jewish Archives should be continued as a tribute to its founders: Saul Hayes, long-time executive director of Congress; Louis Rosenberg, its first editor; and David Rome, in appreciation of his prodigious output since 1974. While Rabbi S. Gershon Levi was Canada’s first Jewish military chaplain, the practice of appointing Jews as civilian chaplains dates back to the 1890s. The first Jewish civilian chaplain was Rabbi Hartog Veld of Montreal’s Temple Emmanuel, appointed by the federal government to tend to the spiritual and social needs of Jews who found themselves in penal institutions. Rabbi Veld was one of the rabbinic advisers to the Baron de Hirsch Institute. The Institute began to extend service to Jews in prison and in other Institutions soon after its establishment, in 1891, in cooperation with the Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society. Abraham Arnold Winnipeg pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cjs/article/view/19823/18527