Last year, two of the leading historians of Jewish Canada, Pierre Anctil and Richard Menkis, published In a "Land of Hope": Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, volume 1, 1627-1923, a landmark collection of primary sources. Thanks to the generous support of York University's J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry and the University of British Columbia's Open Access Fund, the volume's publisher, The Champlain Society, has made all of the primary sources freely available to read online.

In this episode, Richard Menkis, who teaches at the University of British Columbia, chats with host Jonathan Slater about the reader: how it came to be, its contents, uses, and its value for anyone interested in Canadian Jewish history. Menkis, the ACJS's Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award winner in 2018, also discusses his circuitous path into Canadian Jewish studies, and the state of the field. 

Please visit the website of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to learn more about its work, how it supports the research and study of Canadian Jewish life, and how you can contribute. The entire catalogue of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates the Canadian Jewish experience, is free to read online. The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is based at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, in Toronto, ON. 

For updates on the goings-on of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies, sign-up for the ACJS's newsletter. If you have comments or thoughts about our podcast, please email us at acjs@yorku.ca