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In Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil, Rebecca Margolis shows that Montreal’s vibrant Yiddish culture is the legacy of a driven group of the city’s Jews who devoted themselves to the revitalization of the Jewish community, creating a long-lasting infrastructure and institutions that have bolstered Yiddish identity.
The Gazette’s Peggy Curan sat down with Margolis to talk about Yiddish’s chutzpah.
Growing up in the 1980s in Montreal, Rebecca Margolis learned Yiddish in school and thought everyone’s grandmother was a Holocaust survivor with a deep attachment to the language of their eastern European Jewish heritage.
“For me, Yiddish was a cool secret language I spoke with my friends when we didn’t want anyone to know what we were saying, but I didn’t really understand why we were studying it.”
Even when she signed up for a Yiddish class in university, she admits her main motivation was “an easy A.”
Then Margolis moved to New York, where she met Yiddish poets and activists, immersed herself in the culture and met Pakistani cab drivers who used Yiddish curses without even knowing it.
She realized Yiddish had a certain cachet, and grasped how singular and important was Montreal’s vibrant network of Yiddish schools and cultural institutions.
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